Crystal Clear
by adoranymph
Summary: Left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of Shogo Makishima's final judgment, Akane Tsunemori had to step things up if she was going to keep herself from falling apart. And while much of her strength started coming from the encouragement Shinya Kogami had been giving her, now she found some from someone she hadn't expected to. GinAka. Some KogAne too.
1. Midnight Blue

**Chapter One**

 **Midnight Blue**

As Inspector Akane Tsunemori limped her way through the dark back to the lights of the main building of the hyper oats generating facility, wiping away the rest of her tears, a far off childhood memory occurred to her. When she'd been little, her parents had still had a few physical pieces of art on display in their little house, in addition to the environment holo software they'd had installed. One afternoon, Akane had been left alone and had broken one of the vases by accident. With tears in her eyes, fully admitting her guilt, she'd picked up every single piece just as her parents had asked. Once their entire home was furnished with environment holo, such things weren't a problem anymore.

It had been a while since Akane had had to pick up the pieces alone like this.

She supposed she could have waited. She'd had half a mind to just stay sunk on the ground in the paralysis of her shock. But something had told her that she had no reason to wait. He wouldn't be coming back. How could he, when he'd broken the law, and his promise to her, and taken the life of Shogo Makishima with the sound of that gun going off?

 _Kogami._

So it was all up to her now. And as usual, she had her work cut out for her, as far as gathering up who was left. The best she could go on at the moment was follow the drips of blood from their prey, now dead at the hands of Shinya Kogami. Shortly after the world had shattered with the sound of that gun, she'd tended to picking herself up first and foremost, and then she turned away, turned back towards the hyper oats facility. She stumbled only once, her head pounding, and when she felt her temple, her fingertips came away with blood. That would have to be looked after too, at some point.

But with it being so dark, she'd have to use the UV light on her communicator to spot the telltale blood trail, as she clutched the Dominator she'd been carrying in her other hand. In many ways, the talking gun was no more than an extension of her arm.

She followed that trail in the dark from the loading dock, doing away with everything else running in her mind and concentrating on just finding Ginoza, Masaoka, and Kunizuka. That was at least an action she could take that would move her forward.

And then she heard the wailing. It had the same feel to it as the scream she'd let out watching Makishima slice Yuki's throat. That sent a painful anxiety rising up in her stomach, and she quickened her pace.

Back deep within the dark warehouse, all the lights had been brought up, probably thanks to Kunizuka and the emergency power. All around the plant hummed with having resumed hyper oats production, no one else in Japan being the wiser that the whole operation had nearly been destroyed in a single stroke.

Kunizuka herself was standing with the most dumbstruck expression that Akane had seen on her face since she'd first met her, her hands somehow covered in blood, her white shirt under her black jacket soaked with it. And just a few feet away were two crumpled figures on the floor. One was a bloody mess that took Akane a moment to recognize as Mr. Masaoka once she made out the old lined face and the hair. He had a peaceful look on his face, and it coldly hit her how immediately she picked up on the fact that he was most certainly dead.

Painful sadness settled inside Akane's heart, like a slow knife blade. She had grown quite fond of the old man, respecting his gentle and wise advice quite as much as she'd respected Kogami's more blunt variety. He had reminded her of those gumshoe detectives in those old black and white movies you could still find copies of floating around the Net if you looked hard enough and in the right places.

Meanwhile, the other figure could only be Ginoza, but the only way Akane figured that out initially was by the process of elimination, and by his inspector's jacket. Otherwise, he was completely unrecognizable as an utterly distraught young man screaming with shaking sobs and clutching Masaoka's jacket with one hand while his entire other arm hung limp and bloodied and sticking out at a very wrong angle at his side, as though it'd been crushed by something huge and heavy. Wrapped around it appeared to be a necktie being used as a makeshift tourniquet, and it was then that Akane noticed Kunizuka was missing her tie, which would better explain the blood on her hands.

Akane could almost see it: Kunizuka probably had to struggle with Ginoza, and he probably uncharacteristically tried to fight her off, possibly shouting at her (given his current state of distress), while she would have firmly said, "Inspector! If nothing's done, you're going to bleed to death!" in that cool, firm, sober, slightly husky voice of hers.

Adding to Akane's perplexity was why it appeared to be the loss of Masaoka—which was sad enough in and of itself—that had made cool and collected Mr. Ginoza crack like this. Moreover, Kinizuka's shocked response to this.

Unless Masaoka had actually meant something to Ginoza, and that was part of why nobody ever brought up the fact that it seemed that there had been some bad blood between them, something she had picked up on during the Drone Case.

And then she recalled a conversation she and Masaoka had had a while back, and it clicked.

"Oh God." Akane had thought it without realizing she'd said it aloud.

Kunizuka actually jumped as though startled. "Inspector."

Their eyes met, soberly, and the two of them nodded, their attitudes towards each other echoing the conversation they'd had earlier, where Kunizuka had declared that she had come to respect Akane such that she felt sure she could put her life in her hands as one of her Enforcers, that she would be an Inspector who would captain her team with extreme care and loyalty.

Then Kunizuka's communicator went off, and she answered.

"Right." She turned to Akane. "That's the med evac I called in for Inspector Ginoza." Her eyes touched briefly on Akane's head wound and the general state of her. "You'll need some attention too."

"Thank you, Kunizuka. Could you go and bring them in?" Akane pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "I can at least watch him." She inclined her head towards the prostrate Ginoza without opening her eyes.

"Of course."

Akane heard her leave the warehouse with the clipped sound of her footsteps.

Ginoza cried, if possible, even harder, heaving deep chest chokes as tears streamed down his face.

Akane opened her eyes and surveyed the scene of grief with piercing compassion.

 _Oh_ _Mr. Masaoka..._

And then Ginoza lifted up his head and looked at her, and his expression was far too sad for words. Their gazes held for a moment—Akane's pitying, Ginoza's desperate and lost, blood trickling out the side of his mouth as he coughed it up—and then he turned his face away, as though ashamed Akane was seeing him this way.

Which made sense. He was always so proud, and to a fault without realizing it. At least that's what Akane sadly thought.

 _Mr. Ginoza..._

God, she'd tried so hard to warn them in time. But Makishima had gotten to them first.

Out of respect, Akane looked away, switching off her UV light on her watch. As she did, she again considered the Dominator in her other hand. Mere hours ago, she had been conversing with the Sybil System itself through it, the Dominator acting as a mouthpiece beyond announcing Crime Coefficients and validating users.

Its silence now frustrated her, though she reasonably knew it couldn't very well start talking freely in front of other people, lest it risk revealing its disturbing secret. On top of that, an entity like the Sibyl System would have nothing to say on the matter at hand, something that to Akane bordered on the cold, calculating indifference that formed the basis of Sibyl's approach to everything...all those pickled brains of the "criminally asymptomatic" floating in jars of fluid.

Maybe that was why she was so frustrated and angry with it in the first place. This so-called perfect system couldn't judge a man who held a blade to a crying woman's throat...or who slaughtered another man who had always tried to live with pride and honor in his work even as a Latent Criminal and Enforcer.

For a moment her anger threatened to get the better of her, but something about the way Ginoza's choked crying echoed nearby immediately snapped her out of it.

And that voice that always spoke up and pulled her from the brink said, this time in a voice that sounded a bit like Kogami's:

 _Remember, you have to be stronger than that._

So Akane found her calm again.

And then Ginoza's cries subsided and he became very quiet. Eerily so, in fact.

"Hey...Akane...?"

His voice was a frighteningly soft and weak croak. No less he had to be in some state of delirium from the blood loss, being that this was only the second time he'd addressed her by her first name. The first time, she vaguely recalled, was when he'd been trying to snap her out of the shock she'd been reeling in from reliving Yuki's death in order to do a memory scoop so they could finally get a clear picture of Makishima's face. Now Akane found him smiling of all things, but it was bitter and mirthless and ironic and as weak as his voice. Even as he spoke though he kept his eyes on the man who could only be that father that he had now lost twice and forever.

"You need to...check my hue," he said on a kind of resigned and pained sigh. "I have to know..." Finally he looked up at her, and there was a bleak, lackluster glaze over his eyes that gave Akane a sudden sinking feeling. "I have to know...if it really is...too late...for me..."

And then his eyes fell closed as he teetered sideways and fell on Mr. Masaoka's still chest in a faint.

"Mr. Ginoza!" Akane dropped to her knees beside him. And then all of a sudden she just couldn't help it. Her voice cracked and she started crying like a child who had skinned her knee. It was all she could do for her senior inspector, so broken in more ways than one. And the pounding in her head only got worse, as blood started to trickle into her eyes and mix with the tears. She even thought for one wild moment about checking Ginoza's hue, like he'd asked, but something inside her didn't want to know, as if she already knew she might find his Crime Coefficient well above 100.

Instead, she wanted to believe that after rest and recovery, he'd be able to bring down his Crime Coefficient. He was so dedicated to it, surely he'd be strong enough to bring it back down even it had already spiked so high.

"Hang in there, Mr. Ginoza," she murmured urgently, and already she was able to gulp back her tears and turn things into steely determination. "I won't let you fall too."

When Kunizuka arrived with the team equipped with medical drones, Akane's tears were spent, and she turned away again, leaving Ginoza in the hands of the med evac team and their drones.

She only wobbled once more on her legs as she got up, and for the present just allowed the relief of being able to momentarily rest her thoughts and allow herself to be looked after by someone other than herself. Well, some _thing_ , anyway, as her injuries weren't nearly as critical and could be left to the care of a First Aid drone. Actually, she preferred this set-up to a real person, just so she could finish gathering the pieces of herself. But once she'd been fitted with a bandage to stop the bleeding and her other injuries had been seen to, she reassumed her poise in the holding compartment of the med evac's craft preparing to lift off and take them all back to Tokyo.

Kunizuka took a seat across from her. "Kogami isn't coming back, is he?"

Akane met her remaining Enforcer's gaze and sighed. "No. He's not. But at the very least, we won't have to worry about Shogo Makishima anymore."

"I see," said Kunizuka sadly, understanding. "Then…what's our next move, Inspector?"

Akane actually managed a smile, if a tired one. "Division One's taking a week's vacation, as far as I'm concerned." Her head smarted and she briefly touched her bandage, as if to reassure herself that it hadn't started bleeding again.

At this pronouncement, Kunizuka managed a tired smile too. "That sounds like a good deal, Inspector."

Akane couldn't have agreed more, though she couldn't help but go over and over in her head the way Ginoza had looked at her so sadly as he'd told her she'd had to check his hue. In truth, there was no doubt that the med evac team was already doing a check on his hue, given the state of things. It was normal procedure. People who were traumatized in any way had to have a hue check, to see how much their Crime Coefficient had been affected by the undue stress. The drone that had patched her up had done a scan on her as part of giving her on-the-scene medical attention.

But of course, as usual, her hue was no more than a pale teal. If she checked it again, it would probably already be back down to powder blue, or maybe even alice blue. Even so, she tapped her index finger on her knee as the transport shuddered and started to lift off into the air.

The real next move was something she'd have to take care of herself. Once they got back to Tokyo, the first thing she was going to do was have another chat with Sibyl.

* * *

 _How is it my hue isn't anywhere close to something so dark as mahogany red?_

Akane couldn't fathom it, given how hot with anger she was inside. In fact, she was so angry that for a moment she thought her heart might explode.

Yet, she was nearly crystal clear as usual. Indeed, as predicted, a light and healthy shade of alice blue.

She wasn't by any means frustrated by this, not really. She had bigger things to be frustrated with, like the conversation she'd had with Sibyl, which in her opinion had to be about the smuggest entity on the planet. Akane had never been a fan of smug people, though at the same time she didn't have a problem with sticking it to someone when the situation called for it.

Regardless, she was already in a state of purposeful calm when she returned to the MWPSB to see how Ginoza was faring in the medical quarters. When she arrived, she found out that Ginoza was in the OR getting his ruined arm sawed off and fitted with a mechanical artificial one like his father's had been. Kunizuka had taken up a kind of sentinel post outside the OR, in addition to Division One's analyst Shion Kuronomori, and a patrolling drone.

It was Kuranamori who spotted her first as she and Kunizuka were talking. "Akane."

For whatever reason, Shion had no problem addressing everyone in Division One by their first name, save for Ginoza (who'd probably given her a dirty look when she'd first tried). Akane had never really minded. There was something almost…fairy godmother-ish about their sultry little "goddess of information", with her fire engine red dress underneath her lab coat and spiked high heels that Akane couldn't dream of wearing herself. Nevertheless, Akane found the analyst-cum-latent-criminal's presence comforting in that way, always feeling like she could talk about pretty much anything with her.

"Inspector, shouldn't you be at home?" Kunizuka raised an eyebrow and folded her arms.

"Like I could go home," Akane admitted. It was strange how her brain and body were so tired, and yet she couldn't imagine pausing for even a breath. Besides, how could she, when she still had a report to write up, recounting everything, every painful detail? "How's Ginoza doing in there?"

"They're still operating on him," said Shion, taking out a pack of her cigarettes from the inside breast pocket of her lab coat. For the first time, Akane noticed they were the Spinel brand, the same brand Kogami would smoke. For a moment she experienced a pang at the thought.

"Did they say how long?" she asked, trying to keep the focus of the conversation on Ginoza to steer her thoughts away from Kogami.

Shion pulled out a cigarette with her teeth. "Well, we haven't heard any screaming yet, so they haven't gotten to the part where they connect the new arm," she said as she tucked the rest of her cigarettes back in her pocket and then fished for her lighter.

Akane shuddered inwardly. From what she remembered from the brief courses she was given on basic medicine and surgery as part of training for the field, anyone getting artificial cybernetic limbs had to be conscious during the procedure to make sure the nerves connected properly. It had to do with observing the patient's physical reaction to it, that unconscious it was difficult to detect whether the connection had been successful such that they would be able to see the impulses passing from the living nerves to the cybernetic ones in the new limb. Afterwards, extreme stress treatment was usually administered to account for the more-than-likely spike in one's Crime Coefficient from undergoing such pain.

Probably what they'd done is resupplied Ginoza's blood right on the transport back to Tokyo. More than likely he'd have been put under anesthesia while they removed the arm, perhaps briefly bringing him to consciousness beforehand to make him aware of his condition, and receive medical consent to have the arm removed and replaced with a mechanical one. Then they'd have to wake him up again to put on the new arm and monitor those nerve connections and make sure they lined up correctly.

The click of Shion's lighter jerked Akane out of her reverie. Yet the second she'd lit her cigarette, the nearby drone sensed the smoke and gave her a painful zap in her thigh.

"Ouch!" Shion turned angrily on the drone. "Hey, bug off!" she snapped.

"Smoking is hazardous to your health," the drone rattled off in its overly cheerful female voice. "It is also hazardous to the health of those around you. Smoking in a medical zone is strictly prohibited. We advise you refrain from smoking, please."

Kunizuka chuckled dryly. "The bot has a point, Shion." She lifted her lashes in a rather knowing and very intimate kind of way, as though she were being devilishly playful.

"Damn the bot," Shion growled, and very decisively stamped her cigarette out on the drone's sensor.

"Please refrain from vandalizing this unit," the drone commanded.

Shion sighed and withdrew the cigarette, flicking it in a nearby disposal unit, and even doing the drone the courtesy of brushing off the hot ash she'd gotten on it.

For a moment Akane felt a more gentle peace wash over her. Something about the carefree way Shion and the Enforcers always expressed themselves in their own way had been something she'd actually rather enjoyed from day one. Despite how high their Crime Coefficients were, she could never say that they were anything like highly stressed. Certainly not in the same mindset as those banging their heads against a white wall in the Isolation Facility.

But the air was split by the sound of an almost inhuman shriek coming from inside the OR. Yet something in the nature of its rawness gave away that that it was Ginoza screaming like that. Over and over, he cried out like the repeated stabbing of a knife blade, long and agonizing. Akane, Kunizuka, and Shion all fell into sober silence.

They all seemed to be of the same mind, that if they stepped away for even a moment, it would be like they were betraying their fellow in arms. More than that, but it hurt Akane to imagine how distraught Masaoka might've been (even if he wouldn't outwardly show it) to hear such howls of pain coming from his son.

Despite this though, it still felt like the sad presence of Tomomi Masaoka hung over the three of them as Ginoza carried on shrieking.

For that matter, how horrible it would be if Shinya Kogami were able to hear those shrieks too.

* * *

After receiving clearance with her authority as an Inspector from the building office, Akane managed to obtain access to Ginoza's apartment. The moment she cracked open the door, she was welcomed with the whining whimpering barks of a dog.

Dime.

 _"_ _Dime?" Akane looked up at Kinuzuka from her computer's monitor holo, her eyeballs throbbing over the painstaking job she was doing writing up this report._

 _"_ _You're the only one who can leave the MWPSB to see he's fed," Kunizuka explained. And then she gave Akane one of her rare smiles. "It's his dog."_

 _"_ _Mr. Ginoza…has a dog?"_

 _"_ _Yeah. A Siberian husky. Actually, it's kind of adorable, naming him for his little hobby of collecting coins." Kunizuka's tone was searing with the sort of dry teasing pertaining to the subject that clearly she'd never been able to express to Ginoza himself. Moreover, it was likely that she'd learned all this personal info not from Ginoza, but from Kogami, perhaps in passing. Perhaps it had been Ginoza's old friend's way of trying to humanize the man for the benefit of the rest of the Enforcers in Division One._

 _"_ _Hm. Well that would explain his avatar, anyway." Akane couldn't help but being a little amused herself. "Okay. I'll be sure to stop by on my way home tonight."_

 _Kunizuka gave a little two-fingered salute. "Thanks, Inspector."_

Stepping across the threshold, Akane shut the door behind her and did a quick examination of the sparse main room of the apartment. Naturally it was neat as a pin, and felt sterilely clean, to say the least. She even wondered if Ginoza ever actually did any experimentation with environment holo, and suspected that he probably didn't, and instead preferred it this clinically lacking in personality or substance.

The desperate, yipping barks started up again.

Akane followed them, rounding the corner into the kitchen where she found a very perky, tail-wagging, white and tan Siberian husky pacing back and forth in a pen in the corner.

Dime barked at the sight of her, the way his mouth hung open and his tongue lolled out as he panted making him seem like he had a huge smile on his face.

And why shouldn't he? Someone had finally come to feed him. It wasn't his master, unfortunately, but at least it was someone.

"Hey, boy," Akane fawned, reaching out a hand. After the dog gave her a sniff and then barked, wagging his tail in approval, she gave his ears a scratch before locating the dog food and pouring some into his bowl.

The husky barked again and dug into the kibble rather greedily, the poor thing.

Akane knelt nearby and watched him, unable to help a smile on her face. Yet as she watched this happy dog that belonged to Ginoza, eating as if nothing was wrong, her eyes suddenly welled up, and before she knew it…she was crying, crying like she did at Yuki's funeral, like she did when she hit Makishima with one of his helmet's and was on the edge of bashing his head in with it until it killed him, like she did when she was left alone to look after Ginoza while Kunizuka went to meet the med evac.

"Damn it." She wiped at her eyes with the insides of her wrists, and she could almost hear old Masaoka telling her in that voice of gruff gentility, "Now, now, little missy. There's no need to start cryin' over me."

But Dime paused in gobbling down his food and snapped his head up, as if sensing her sorrow. He then padded over and nudged his nose through the pen he was kept in, his cold wet nose seeking her, reaching out by taking hold of her sleeve in his teeth, tugging at her, as if to let her know, "Hey, it's okay. You can talk to me about it. I'll listen."

Akane looked up with her teary eyes and managed a watery laugh, giving the dog another scratch behind the ears. "I can see why Ginoza keeps you," she muttered, and then she wondered if there hadn't been a few times where Ginoza had been alone like this with Dime, and he hadn't started getting choked up, and Dime hadn't done the same thing for him that he was doing for her now.

It wouldn't surprise her, given how quickly the husky had reacted to her tears.

He gave her that doggy grin as she petted him, and before she knew it she was leaning over and putting her arms around the dog's neck, hugging his quivering and soft warmth as close as she could.

"You're a good boy, aren't you? You'll keep an eye on Gino, won't you?" Alone this way, and off the record, Akane felt it natural somehow to use Kogami's nickname for his dear friend. Because really, she wasn't just crying for Masaoka, but for Ginoza and Kogami too.

Dime barked, and Akane laughed again.

"I'll take that as a promise then."

* * *

It felt like forever since Akane had last been home in her apartment. She'd had her head bandage changed before finally leaving her completed report at the MWPSB, and came in through her front door in the wee hours of the morning, that time in the night when everything felt dreamlike, whether awake or asleep.

For a moment her hand hovered over activating her holo system after she locked the door. But then she realized she had no desire to hear Candy's perky AI voice gushing in her ear. So she left the interior of her apartment as a blank slate and made a beeline for the shower. Letting the hot, steaming water run over her body, she felt that she could at least safely say that she had collected all of the pieces that had fallen and could toss them out.

As she stepped out however, she found two pieces still glittering on the floor in her mind's eye. And she was hesitant to pick them up. She was afraid too, and could only watch their shimmering sharpness in a paralyzing awe.

Wrapped in a towel, she collapsed on her sofa and leaned her head back, staring up into the dark void of the ceiling. Everything inside her felt so heavy, and she thought how nice it would be to just melt into the cushions beneath her. She might as well have, as those two remaining pieces whirled in her mind.

Where was Kogami now, right at this very moment? He obviously had evaded capture. Perhaps he'd managed to escape Japan entirely. Not an easy feat, but then, Kogami never let anything like something difficult stop him. What kind of detective would he have been otherwise?

And then there was Ginoza. What was going to happen to him? Was he going to hang in there? Would she be able to make any kind of difference in his fate, or would it matter very little if she tried?

She exhaled and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand, like she'd done when she'd asked Kunizuka to meet the med evac.

Then she got up and moved into her bedroom to slip into a negligee in preparation to crawl at last into her bed. But on her way to slide in between the sheets, she paused at her closet where she had her Inspector's jacket hung up and dug into one of the pockets.

She puzzled once again for a moment over the memento of sorts that Kogami appeared to have left her with for some reason. She almost wanted to think that it was a promise that he might come back for them, but on the other hand, considering the price that was on his head—the Sibyl System now would elminate him on sight seeing as how Akane's efforts to keep him from killing Makishima had failed, the System had made that much clear—it would be risking a lot to come back just for these.

Even it was for his preferred brand of Spinel cigarettes.

Akane gripped the pack hard in her fist, finding some temporary satisfaction in crushing it against her fingers and hearing the crinkle of the wrapping. As if it made up for what was squeezing her heart right now.

* * *

When Akane received news that Ginoza had come out of the coma they'd put him in to help him recover from the ordeal of the operation as part of the post-op stress treatment, she came as soon as she could, having asked that she deliver his father's ashes to him herself. She liked to think that Ginoza would prefer it were someone like her, rather than someone he didn't know. Something like this deserved all the warmth of humanity it could manage.

Upon her arrival in the medical quarters of the MWPSB, she was confronted by one of the doctors on staff who had overseen the operation and was now overseeing the post-op recovery.

"Ah, Inspector." The doctor shook her hand. "I'm Doctor Kobayashi."

"How's he doing?" she asked.

"How thoughtful a junior inspector you are," Kobayashi complimented, not missing the box urn with Masaoka's ashes she carried reverently in her hands. "Well, he's alive anyway. But we're having some difficulty bringing his Crime Coefficient down. Strictly speaking, it's far too close to the danger zone for my comfort, but it's still too early to judge his response to the stress treatment. We're cautious of course, but we do also allow a grace period in these situations, excepting of course if his number does exceed 100. I'm afraid there's zero tolerance there. Rules are rules, after all." She smiled.

Akane bit her lip. "Well, what _is_ his Crime Coefficient?"

Kobayashi looked left and then right, referred to her tablet, and then whispered, "I'm afraid it's 99, Inspector."

Akane swallowed. _Maybe…maybe I shouldn't bring him his father's ashes right now._

On the other hand, what good would it do postponing the inevitable? He already knew his father was dead. That was why his Coefficient was so high in the first place.

But then a nurse came out from the room they were keeping Ginoza in and brightened into a smile when she saw Akane.

"Are you Inspector Tsunemori?" she asked.

"I am," Akane affirmed.

"Excellent, Mr. Ginoza did express a hope that you might come visit him." The nurse's eyes caught the urn in Akane's hands. "And you brought Mr. Masaoka's ashes?" She seemed to be doing her best not to suddenly sound disturbed.

Akane blinked before answering. The bit about Ginoza doing something like hoping she would visit him threw her off a little. "Um...yeah."

"I see." The nurse leaned forward and spoke in an undertone. "Well, that's very kind of you. But do try to be discreet about it. We're trying to bring his Crime Coefficient down, you know."

"Yes, I'm aware." For some reason, the nurse's mentioning this to her irked Akane just a little, even though she herself had just been thinking of reconsidering delivering the ashes. "I appreciate the concern," she went on, clearing her throat, "but, as harsh it is to say it, he's going to have to deal with it sooner or later."

And she wanted to believe that Ginoza would come out stronger for this.

"Well just be careful," the nurse pressed again, sounding all the more anxious, piquing Akane's irritation.

Like she of all people didn't understand the risks involved in all this.

"Nurse Maki, if you please," said Dr. Kobayashi in a tone that was clearly gentle admonishment. "Let's leave the inspector to her visit, shall we?"

It was then Akane found she at least preferred Kobayashi over Nurse Maki.

"Very well, doctor." Nurse Maki inclined her head, as did Dr. Kobayashi, and the two of them stepped aside to let Akane pass.

And after all that, Akane entered Ginoza's room bearing Masaoka's ashes anyway. Oh well. No turning back.

Unlike Kogami, who would often read books containing rich explorations of deep philosophy, like _Heart of Darkness_ , or _In Search of Lost Time_ , Ginoza, while he strictly preferred non-fiction, kept to very clinical, straightforward topics like law and history. Just the same, Ginoza was still something of a mirror of his friend in the way Akane found him sitting up in bed with a book in hands (though he seemed to prefer the e-book format to the paper-and-glue that Kogami had had a fondness for). Akane felt only a flicker of pain at the familiarity of the scene, but she managed to let it pass her by without incident and forced a smile, even as her senior inspector looked up at her from his reading at the sound of her arrival and gave her the old hardened look with which she'd first encountered him what felt like so long ago.

"Inspector." He nodded curtly in greeting and set aside his e-book tablet.

Akane wanted to ask something like, "How are you feeling?" but the words got stuck in her throat. Finally she managed, "Sir," and approached the bed with Masaoka's ashes in her hands.

Ginoza's cold gaze flicked down to the box in her hands and something intense flashed in them. "Are those…?" His voice trembled, just ever so slightly.

"Yes," Akane admitted regretfully. "But…I thought maybe…you'd rather it wasn't…some stranger delivering them to you."

Her senior inspector stared at the box of ashes a moment longer as though they were something about to bite him, and then he looked at her, and she could see he was considering her choice of words. And then the corner of his mouth twitched…and he actually smiled, just a little, if grimly. Even so, there was the faintest hint of warmth to it, and that was more than Akane had ever seen on his face before.

Akane took a cue from that and gave a cautious smile herself. "Well, that's a relief."

Ginoza blinked at her, actually surprised by her. "What is?"

"I was starting to think you were a robot this whole time," Akane teased, though she kept her tone careful.

Still, it was nice to see Ginoza give her another smile rather than a stern frown. In fact, this smile seemed warmer than the last. Genuinely amused, even. "I assure you, cybernetics doesn't appeal all that much to me."

It was only then that Akane really noticed the new arm, and as if they had both been avoiding it up until this point, they both glanced at it. How had Akane not even noticed how well it already served to hold up his tablet while he'd been reading?

Was it because it didn't seem all that out-of-place on him, somehow? Like how some people were naturally photogenic, maybe people like Ginoza and his father made the look of cybernetics "work".

Yet any idiot could see that it wasn't an issue of aesthetics. It was the context of the arm itself. It would always serve a reminder to Ginoza how his father had died. Akane bit her lip, pushing back that flaring memory of a distraught Ginoza broken and bleeding on the ground.

And then she found what she felt was the right response and managed a smile again, though it was her turn to be melancholy about it, as she finally set the urn down on the bedside table. The urn itself had been made of polished rosewood, the rich color of the whiskey Masaoka had always liked to drink—it had been left to Akane to pick it out, since Ginoza had been unable.

Ginoza's eyes flicked from his new arm to the urn, and he noted the design and the material from which it had been made, and Akane gently relayed to him how she'd come to be given the task of choosing the make of the urn.

He furrowed his brow, but somehow he still managed a smile, albeit a sober one. "It's nice, perfect. I'm glad that at least his final resting place was made into something so comforting. God knows I was kind of afraid it wouldn't be…given his…status." He looked up at his junior inspector. "Thank you."

Akane put a hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow. "This is something of a big step for you, Mr. Ginoza," she teased again, unable to help herself. "I've never seen you let your hair down like this. If you're not planning on making this a thing when you get back to work, you should warn me now so I don't get disappointed later."

Ginoza stared at her again, as though he couldn't quite believe her, and then he gave an outright cough of laughter—the kind of laugh that was genuine in the gut but dusty from ill-use. "Man, where you get your balls, I'll never know. Since we're actually having a talk like this, I guess it's finally time I told you how much I scared off my former junior inspector. After working under me for four months, he gunned for a transfer in administration and never looked back once he got it. And you were the one who filled his vacancy."

Now it was Akane's turn to stare, and then she scowled at him before she could stop herself. "Good to know you decided to use the same scare tactics with me even with such a fantastic failure as scaring off a junior inspector," she admonished, but Ginoza just gave another cough of laughter. Maybe he was finding it strangely refreshing to be on the receiving end of vituperation between them for once. She considered adding the remark that she'd hit him if he weren't in a hospital bed, but refrained, feeling perhaps he'd been punished more than enough.

She sighed. "Well, anyway, we're all wishing you a good recovery. But don't push yourself. Take all the time you need."

Some of the light that had arisen fresh in Ginoza's eyes dimmed, and his smile became sober again. "Yes, I have my Crime Coefficient to work on, after all."

At this, Akane couldn't help softening with encouragement. "Hey, it'll be fine. I have faith. You're too stubborn to let your number spike too high." She didn't ask if he knew that his number was 99 at the moment, and he didn't ask whether she knew either.

She inclined her head. "Well, I'd better be going. I've put Division One on a bit of a break, but we're all getting back to it on Monday."

This time, when Ginoza looked at her, his smile held no trace of melancholy. In fact, she'd daresay it was a proud one. "Well done, Inspector. You've rallied what's left of us rather well, small as we are at the moment."

"Well…I had to."

"Even so. You deserve a lot more credit than I've given you."

"Thank you, sir. I sincerely appreciate it." Akane turned to go.

"I think I speak for Kogami too…when I say that I'm…proud of you," Ginoza suddenly piped up, sounding uncharacteristically sheepish. Or maybe it was just the discomfort of mentioning Kogami, but at least it saved Akane the trouble of asking whether he knew about the Enforcer's desertion.

Without turning around, Akane said, "Thank you, again…Mr. Ginoza." She paused at the door and then flashed her superior a grin, as if eager to bring levity back to the mood. "Oh, and don't worry about Dime. I went around and fed him and took him for a walk yesterday."

"Dime?" Ginoza blinked and then gave her another smile that was sincerely grateful. Relieved even. "Ah. Thank you. I was…getting worried about him."

And out of the corner of Akane's eye, she thought she saw the little number indicating Ginoza's Crime Coefficient drop from 99 to 98.6.


	2. Deep Indigo

**Chapter Two**

 **Deep Indigo**

Akane had another reason for giving Division One a week to recuperate. If she hadn't had this reason, she might not have gotten authorization to take Division One off-duty for that long, considering how fragile things still were from the Helmet Riots.

After all, it wasn't just Shinya Kogami's going AWOL and Tomomi Masaoka's death that they had to deal with in the fallout.

Akane tugged at the back of the chair at Shusei Kagari's desk and paused, feeling the anger stir inside her again, replaying over and over again that video clip on that phone that'd been recovered from the wreckage of the airborne transport that Makishima had forced to crash-land (which Akane had taken great pains to get a hold of from the moment Sibyl had personally informed her of Kagari's death and how he'd died).

She remembered the blood and guts of whoever Kagari had been with splattered on the floor, and then Kagari's last words:

 _"_ _Just my luck, huh. This sucks."_

Only for Akane's playing it to herself triggering a self-destruct mechanism that had been planted on it, forcing her to throw it against the wall of the Evidentiary Vault. But then…how he had died had to be kept a secret, of course. A Sibyl-enforced policy which pissed Akane off even more.

"Inspector?"

Kunizuka had come up behind Akane with an empty box.

"Great, thanks."

The two of them started the grim task of collecting the personal items from Kagari's desk, Kunizuka holding the box while Akane went through everything: his jar of candies, his little fake toy lizard that he had clipped to his computer monitor, his favorite handheld game player, a box full of gaming data cartridges, some spares of the hair barrettes he'd liked to use to keep his bangs out of his face, a collection of hardcopy DVDs, including _Star Wars: the Clone Wars_ , and the first _Transformers_ movie and its sequel, _Dark of the Moon._ Likely he only had digital copies of the rest.

There was even an e-book tablet, but a cursory flip through the titles loaded onto it out of curiosity revealed that he'd mostly downloaded volumes of really old _Shounen Jump_ titles like _JoJo's Bizarre Adventure._

Akane slid it into the box alongside the DVDs and the game cartridges.

"Where's this all going?" Kunizuka asked when they'd finished clearing out everything. "Did Kagari actually have family out there in the real world?"

Akane frowned at her. "You mean you don't know?"

Kunizuka shook her head. "Kagari didn't talk about personal stuff like that, and I'm not one to pry. We all knew how young he was when he got flagged and thrown in iso, but that's about it, and from previous case studies, most families who have a relative who gets thrown in that young tend to cut off ties with that person out of shame."

"I see." Akane should've guessed as much. "Well, the records say he has a father who's still alive. Masanori Kagari. So, that's where this is all going. If he doesn't want this stuff, then…well…guess it'll get pawned off like at an estate sale, or disposed of. But I did volunteer to deliver the box."

"Hm." Kunizuka seemed to think for a moment, and then said, "Well, let me know how it goes. With Kagari's dad I mean. I'll admit I'm curious."

Akane wondered sadly if Kunizuka's thoughts had drifted to her own family. "Sure. I'll let you know."

After she flipped the box flaps closed, Kunizuka handed her the roll of packing tape.

"Do you mind getting started on Masaoka's desk?" Akane asked her. "I can finish up here, there's just the stuff that can go in the trash that's left."

"Not at all." And Kunizuka went to get another box.

Akane stared after her, and then wistfully regarded all the things in the box she'd filled, all these things that might've been found in a teenager's bedroom, for how youthful Kagari's personality and attitude had been. She found herself thinking of the first time she'd met him, the way he'd grinned and crowed: _"Wow! You said we were gettin' a rookie, but you didn't say she'd be so_ cute _!"_

And then the last thing he'd said as she and Kogami had let him take point down in the anechoic chambers below at Nona Tower, and Kogami had ordered him not to do anything reckless:

 _"_ _Heh. I don't need_ you _of all people to tell me that, Ko."_

Thinking of Kogami then, she knew she couldn't forget either, that one night she'd hung out in Kagari's quarters, and she'd played on the pinball machine he'd had installed there while he cooked them up some "real food"…and she'd been asking him about Kogami's past…which made Kagari tease her with, _"Are you in love?"_ which had made her laugh outright. Though even now, with everything so tangled up, she still wasn't sure in the first place why she had laughed in that moment.

Akane's eyes stung, her grief over Kagari mingling with what grief was still lodged in her heart like a shard of glass over Yuki's and Masaoka's deaths, and Kogami's disappearance. Then she swallowed everything back and taped the box shut.

* * *

As Akane drove up to the apartment building where Kagari's father lived, she found herself wondering if he even knew about his son being dead. She hadn't been informed that he had, which made her a little more nervous than she already was.

But she swallowed her nerves and stepped out of the car. As she hefted the box out of her back seat, she really hoped that at the very least Masanori Kagari would take this stuff just so she wouldn't have to feel like she'd lugged it all the way up to his apartment for nothing.

When she knocked three times with no answer, she started to think that the man wasn't at home and was just about to consider coming back later. Then the door clicked open and a man with greying hair stood in the doorway, and he looked so much like Kagari would have if he'd been able to grow older and hadn't dyed his hair red, that Akane couldn't speak for a second.

He had a lit cigarette in his mouth and a dazed expression in his slightly bloodshot eyes. The fact that the scent from that cigarette was reminiscent of Kogami's Spinels didn't help matters either.

"Um…hello," she greeted uncertainly. She shifted the box of Kagari's things in her arms. "I'm ah…I'm Inspector Akane Tsunemori with the MWPSB. I was ah…."

But then Masanori Kagari's eyes drifted down like falling snow onto the box in her arms, and recognition flitted across his face.

Then he regarded her with more clarity than he had a moment before. "I'm sorry. Yes, hello. I…. This is about Shusei, isn't it?"

"Ah, yes…." Akane's palms started to sweat, and she scraped her foot uncertainly on the concrete, like a nervous foal. "Um…these are his um…things."

 _Come on Akane, get it together._

In truth though, this was the first time she'd had to do something like this. Well, sort of. She'd been there when they'd visited Yuki's parents to tell them that their daughter had been murdered, but she'd been standing solemnly behind Ginoza then, while he'd done all the talking. It had all she'd been able to do to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of Yuki's mother's keening wails, and Yuki's father begging Ginoza to make it all untrue as he held his wife in his arms. She'd felt their cries beat against her in waves, shaking her down to her very bones.

Masanori though…he seemed to take this the way a ghost might.

"I see…" he said. "So…he's dead then…. Do I have it right?"

"Yes. You have it right."

"I see…."

And then Masanori Kagari appeared to have anchored himself fully in the present, but he also looked nothing but sad, right down to the cigarette tucked and smoldering in his mouth. Akane suddenly found herself completely on the edge of crying, and she had to work to hold it all back. This was just as bad as watching Yuki's parents lose it, if not worse.

Then Kagari's father said, "I always considered the possibility that this day would come, ever since he first became an Enforcer…but…."

Whatever he wanted to add to that though, it seemed he couldn't find the words. Unable to say anything else, he held his arms out for the box, and Akane, throat too tight to say anything else either, wordlessly and solemnly handed it to him. After he hefted it into his arms, he looked it over with another melancholy look before he managed a wistful smile for Akane.

At the very least, he was sincerely grateful to her.

Akane felt her insides grow taught, and she knew there was something she should be saying. That's right, she should be advising him to make sure he got his hue checked as soon as possible, and recommend that he not delay in seeking out grief counseling and therapy. From the look of things actually, it appeared that he involved himself very little in things like hue checks and managing his Psycho-Pass.

Maybe to him, Shusei Kagari had been dead since he'd been thrown in iso at the tender age of five, and he'd been mourning him long before now. Maybe that was why he was so reserved in his sadness about it now.

But then he caught sight of the pine box of his son's ashes in the box of his things.

Akane had picked that one out too. There had still been some sweetness clinging to the pine, and given Kagari's sweet tooth, she thought he might like a sweet-scented resting place.

And for a moment it looked like Kagari's father was about to break, his eyes wavering and fragile.

Yet, there was still something she knew she should tell him, but she couldn't make herself do it. Her throat felt like it was wrapped in a vise, tightening, tightening. She just couldn't tell him what he should do…she didn't feel like she could, that she had a _right_ to. Like Kagari would tsk her for doing it, that he'd rather she just leave his dad alone.

Then Kagari Senior forced a smile.

"Thank you…for bringing these," he said.

"Yes, of course," said Akane, stiffly, and she managed a bow, which Masanori returned before withdrawing and sliding the door closed.

Once Akane made it back down to her car, she locked herself inside and buried her face in her arms, forehead pressed against the steering wheel as she sobbed like a child.

* * *

Chief Kasei surveyed Akane across her desk like a cat surveys a mouse it's toying with before devouring it. For being nothing more than a highly advanced cyborg unit currently housing the mind of the criminal Kozaburo Toma—though that could change at any time to a completely different mind, since, more largely speaking, Kasei was Sibyl's walking-talking mouthpiece—she certainly knew how to pull off the most infuriatingly smuggest of smug smiles.

But Sibyl, as a collective entity… _liked_ Akane.

No, no. "Like" wasn't really the word for it.

At the very least, it found her sense of justice intriguing, in the way Akane supposed the criminally asymptomatic found anything intellectually interesting to be intriguing, regardless of morality. Like they'd been bored watching animals in a zoo, only to spot one off on its own, leagues ahead of the others in intelligence and ingenuity, though not quite up to the standard of the criminally asymptomatic. The kinds of minds that had no qualms about pitting other people against each other simply as a means to find out what would happen. That had been Shogo Makishima's playground, after all, though Akane had to give the man _some_ credit: at least he hadn't had so much of a god complex that he'd felt compelled to accept Sibyl's offer to join the collective. A rogue among rogues.

Akane raised her chin, but didn't say a word, meeting Kasei's gaze unflinchingly. She even resisted the urge to clear her throat. She wasn't about to show something like impatience at a time like this. After all, this was the first time she'd been called to the Chief's office in this capacity, now that she was acting head of Division One.

However, Akane's anger with Sibyl would be forever rooted in her heart, no matter what events presented themselves in the future. And not just because of the debacle with Makishima.

It was Sibyl, using Kasei's cyborg transport body, that had made the decision to take Kagari's life—to point a Dominator at him and manipulate it so that it shifted to the "Destroy Decompose" function, just like it had tried to do with Ginoza's Dominator when it'd made him point it at Kogami, forcing it into "Elimination" mode. Thankfully Akane had thought quickly enough on her feet to feign innocently thinking that Ginoza's Dominator had been malfunctioning and had taken it upon herself to knock Kogami out with a "Paralyzer" to his thigh. She supposed that might've been the moment that she'd started to take up the reins while Ginoza started faltering. Either way, luckily it succeeded in saving Kogami's life, and saving Ginoza the burden of having to kill his best friend against his will.

In any case, though Sibyl had done an excellent job of disposing of Kagari's remains, leaving no trace, death by "Decompose" meant that Kagari's end had been a violent and bloody one (not that "Elimination" was any less, but "Decompose" was really meant more for inanimate objects, which added insult to injury where Kagari was concerned). No doubt that if Division One _had_ managed to recover his remains, they wouldn't have known it was him, except maybe by the clothes, or maybe even the red hair if the barrettes were still intact.

As far as Akane was concerned, she wanted to make sure that every time she looked at or addressed the secretly Sibyl puppet that was "Chief Kasei", that she project that cold anger that nonetheless burned deep in her heart for what it had done to that kid.

Just as she was doing now. Collective entity or no, nothing more than a group of pickled brains in jars, she would never forgive it for that, even if she was still going to play along with its little games for the sake of fulfilling her duty as a barrier between safe order and dangerous chaos.

Kasei took her sweet time either way, before she decided she'd had enough of this battle of wills and went from sitting with her chin resting on her folded hands to leaning back in her chair with her fingers tented. "So, here you are: in Ginoza's place. How does it feel?"

Akane raised an eyebrow. "Honestly, I can't say I feel much of anything. Except maybe relief that Division One's still functioning."

"Oh, barely. My dear, you are functioning about as well as a three-legged dog that's lost two more legs. But, given that, I must say, you've pulled things together quite well given the circumstances. And in the meantime the system is working to pull together some fresh blood for you before you hemorrhage further. Unfortunately, while Enforcers are as common as they come and just as disposable—" (Akane ground her teeth, but nothing more, refusing to react to this obvious slight meant to be Sibyl's way of spitting in the face of Kagari's memory and be all the more smug about the way it had killed him) "—you'll have to act on your own as Inspector until such time we see how Ginoza fares recovering from his trauma. In which case, I'll have your Division act as a kind of support unit to the other Divisions while they continue to rebuild the city and regain and maintain order. Think of yourself as a _crutch_ for now."

Akane curled her hands into fists at the almost mocking, sardonic tone with which Kasei referred to Ginoza. Clearly she had little faith that the man would recover a healthy hue.

 _What would you know about it?_

Kasei raised her eyebrows at her. "Do you think you can handle flying solo until then?"

"Of course I can," said Akane at once. Truth be told, it was the best thing she could do for herself, focus on getting Division One back into ship-shape so that when Ginoza got back he might actually be outwardly impressed with her. More than that, but it might do all the more good for his own mental health, as much as it did for her, to help her forget all the reasons why Division One had four empty desk chairs.

"Good." Kasei reached over and picked up that Rubik's cube of hers and began fiddling with it, rotating blocks into different combinations. "Don't think I haven't made notes of your progress in the field. You proved you were capable of taking charge of Division One when things started to fall apart, but on the other hand…you let Shinya Kogami get away. Get away with murder no less." She raised her eyebrows again. A warning.

"Yes, I was aware," Akane replied frostily. And then, she gave a sardonic smile of her own. "Of course, perhaps getting away with murder just means that the act was justified. I'm sure that, like you would have done, Kogami weighed the safety of our society against the safety of one man like Makishima, and favored the good of the many over the good of the few."

"Be careful there," Kasei told her more directly, her voice edged with a sharp cut.

She certainly hadn't missed Akane throwing her insult to Kagari and the way he'd died right back in her face. Her expression was even of one who'd been hit and realized that her lip had been split. That she, one who was not used to bleeding, was actually bleeding all of a sudden.

"I realize that there were certain factors that fell out of your control," the Chief went on, "but even so…when we locate the fugitive Kogami, you know what has to happen. The System will pass its judgement. I trust you'll accept it, regardless of what it is."

"I'll point the Dominator myself," Akane told her with steely conviction. "I'll accept whatever judgement it passes on him. He's already accepted that fact on his own. Even knowing that, he still did what he did." She had half a mind to smirk at the way Kasei narrowed her eyes at the suggestion that Kogami had done what Sibyl _should_ have done, given Makishima's crimes, but didn't, because of its inherent flaw.

So it went with any system meant to do what humans did by instinct, even if conversely human instinct was even more flawed in its biases. In its weaknesses.

It was why for example, decades ago, when self-driving cars were first emerging through commercial taxiing services, so many people were uncomfortable with the idea of a car making decisions _for_ them. When driving, things could turn into a life-or-death situation in a split-second, depending on circumstances, and things like that…humans wanted more than ever to be in control, if only to give themselves some sense that they could make things turn out the way they wanted them to, rather than let what would be play out. After, humans had been born with instinct, like all other creatures on this planet, and instincts were one of nature's greatest survival tools.

That said, people did come around when the stats showed that in this case, the machinery of the self-driving cars had better senses about safe driving than people did, because while humans had instinct, they also had the desire to take risks, playing the gamble that by taking it they could come out on the other side fortunate, rather than _un_ fortunate. So at a turn light that's seconds from turning red, a self-driving car would simply slow to a stop, while a human (so often in a hurry) would take the risk of beating the light before it turned red, which may or may not result in a collision.

Really, it was beginning to look like no system, living or non-living, could be without flaws. Flaws were just…something that always had to be there, for some reason. Maybe if only to make interesting the dice game that life seemed to resemble.

Kasei, for her part, seemed at least somewhat satisfied with Akane's apparent and sincere resolve. She gave Akane a curt nod and then dismissed her.

* * *

For Akane, it felt strange to be back on the streets of Tokyo, chasing down latent criminals that try to make a run for it and cornering them with her Dominator (which hadn't spoken to her in a one-on-one conversation format since the Makishima incident at the hyper oats facility). Mostly because she still had this sense she'd felt in the wake of Makishima's death and Kogamei's going AWOL that the world had to have ended there, that it couldn't still be functioning as if nothing happened, as if Tamomi Masaoka hadn't died and Nobuchika Ginoza hadn't lost an arm. When they'd returned to Tokyo from that incident, the whole city was still trying to rebuild itself from the Helmet Riots, large public buildings still full of people being treated for psycho-hazard, their facilities changed to resemble field hospitals, like in any of the war zones in other countries in the world you grew up hearing about.

Even so, Akane carried what she'd managed during that last encounter with Makishima over to the field and office work she did now, living up to that person that Kinuzuka had told her she could trust to put her life in her hands.

The stickiest thing, actually, was getting on with the other Divisions, all of them fully equipped as far as manpower went. Most of them were pretty lukewarm about the whole arrangement, with the understanding that using Division One as a supplemental crutch unit was only temporary, some sympathetic to their predicament, and some not so much.

Least of all Division Three. One of its Inspectors—Moe Suzuki—had no problem in voicing how much he thought Shinya Kogami had been a lousy, good-for-nothing rat who'd disgraced himself and what the MWPSB stood for. And that Nobuchika Ginoza might as well be too (it was already spreading about Ginoza's hue getting so dangerously clouded). Then he'd glanced Akane's way, but Akane simply returned the gesture with a stony look, refusing to acknowledge him any further than that.

Really, only Division Two appeared to be completely in Division One's corner, and Akane was in no doubt that that was due in large part to its Senior Inspector, Risa Aoyanagi, given the fact that Ginoza had been closer to her than most as a colleague.

On a day about two weeks after the Makishima hyper oats incident, Divisions One and Two had just finished coordinating with each other to bring in a group of people who were trying to skip out on getting their hues checked (the frequency of required checks had increased ten-fold, and would stay at that high number until the psycho-hazard was neutralized). As the individuals were being collected after they'd all been hit with "Paralyzer" on the Dominators, Aoyanagi approached Akane while her new Junior Inspector, Mizue Shisui, was getting the Enforcers back into their paddy wagon.

"Thanks again for the backup support. That was some good work out there, Tsunemori," she said. "You've gotten a good head on your shoulders for working under pressure. I can see now what Ginoza was talking about when he was praising your raw aptitude. You take to this really naturally."

Akane tried to force a smile, even though she really didn't feel like it. "Oh well…just doing my job." As soon as she said it, she felt incredibly lame and amateur, more like the rookie she'd started out as. But then she supposed Aoyanagi just made her feel that way, given the other's abundance of experience compared to what little she had under her belt.

"C'mon, don't look so modest." Aoyanagi gave her a wink. "I mean…when I say someone like Ginoza's praising you, it's not like he's…glowing with enthusiasm or anything…but he's definitely painted you in a positive light, even when apparently you were being stubborn."

"Ah-ha, well!" Akane cleared her throat. "I mean…we've had our disagreements now and then."

"That's not surprising, since he's just as stubborn." Then Aoyanagi turned a little more sober and lowered her voice. "How's he doing, by the way?"

"Physically he's healing just fine, but mentally he needs something major to turn things around," Akane admitted. "His Crime Coefficient was ninety-eight-point-six, last I saw him. Even though that was a drop down from a ninety-nine, it's not much of an improvement considering."

"Hm." Though there was a flicker of doubt in Aoyanagi's eyes, she gave Akane a rather sororal smile. "I see now where Ginoza gets envious of you. On the other hand, I can see what he meant when he said he could see how you keep your Psycho-Pass so clear, even in instances where it should've clouded way more than it does, if at all. Which might explain why you've managed so well coming into your own as an Inspector."

Akane frowned a little, maybe because of the way news of her incredibly nearly-uncloudable Psycho-Pass got around like the flu. But then she considered the idea of Ginoza and Aoyanagi in a room together, chatting about her, about work in general. They'd probably chatted about Kogami like this too (though ultimately less positively, for obvious reasons). And somehow, it just made sense to Akane that the two of them could get along. Like Aoyanagi was too tough a chick to be deterred by how prickly Ginoza got, so Ginoza stuck around.

Still, she felt Aoyanagi was giving her too much credit.

"I was just doing what I had to…" she said, thinking back to the first conversation she'd had with the Sibyl System, when it had revealed its true nature to her, when it had pointed out to her that Division One's success against Shogo Makishima was starting to depend heavily on her, with Kogami having absconded to hunt down and kill Makishima himself, Kagari KIA, and Ginoza already on the verge of a breakdown (his father dying was just the straw that broke the camel's back).

"Well, you didn't have a whole lot to work with, considering how crippled Division One had gotten," said Aoyanagi, bringing Akane back to herself. "But you didn't get squeamish about it either, from what I can tell. I pulled up that report you typed up for the Hyper Oats Facility Incident from the MWPSB database. Even through the cold, clinically professional tone, you came out looking pretty good. Not every Junior Inspector in your shoes could've managed what you did, not without cracking first at the very least. Although, maybe you _did_ crack, but either way, where it counted, you were collected, even when things were going south. And ballsy," she added, with an impressed quirk to her mouth, "hitching a ride on the side of a moving truck just to blow out the front tire. In a pencil skirt too."

"Well now you're just making me sound like an action hero," said Akane, even laughing a little.

"Hey, you're allowed to every now and then, you're MWPSB, for crying out loud." Then Aoyanagi's smile turned a little more sympathetic. "Listen, don't let what Suzuki from Division Three's been saying about Kogami and Ginoza get to you either. Knowing Kogami, I guess it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, and well, Ginoza's always walked a dangerous edge, way before all this. The fact that he was so uptight is just because of the fact that he was always painfully aware of that, I think."

Akane's smile felt a little more fragile, but she persevered—because Aoyanagi looked just a little fragile herself. "It's fine. I'm not giving up on him." _I'm not giving up on Kogami either._

"Well, you're a rare one, I'll give you that too." Aoyanagi turned at the sound of her Inspector Shisui calling to her. "Looks like we gotta pack it in."

"Looks like it," Akane agreed, and the two of them parted to slide into their respective cars.

* * *

"Sorry it took so long getting this to you."

Ginoza looked up from his e-reader, finding Akane standing in the doorway of his recovery room, carrying the box full of the things from his father's desk.

He frowned and shut off the reader, setting it aside as Akane came over and popped the box onto the seat of an empty chair in the corner.

"You could've just dropped that off at my apartment when you went to feed Dime," he said.

"I know, but I thought you could use some of your down time going through his things, picking out what you wanted to keep. That sort of thing." Akane gave him an encouraging smile.

Ginoza turned aside, as though he were ashamed of how grouchy he was being but couldn't help himself. "I've been catching up on my reading, can't you tell?"

"Well sure…but…I would think that even _you_ could use a break."

Akane dragged the other empty chair next to the one she'd deposited the box of Masaoka's things on closer to the bed and dropped into it. She sort of perched on the edge of it, resting her elbows on her knees and propping her chin in her hands. Then she caught sight of his Crime Coefficient on display: 98.7.

She looked over at Ginoza and caught him glancing at her sidelong.

She sat up straighter in her chair, hunching a little in meek contrition as she laced her fingers together solemnly in her lap. She dropped her eyes and contemplated her thumbs instead before saying, "I'm sorry. I wasn't even thinking. Of course…you'd need every distraction you could get to get your Crime Coefficient down."

She reached out a hand towards the box, on the verge of getting up to take it back out of the room and go drop it off at Ginoza's apartment like she should've done.

"Wait."

Akane's head snapped up, and was surprised to see Ginoza managing a smile, even if it was wan.

"It's fine, don't worry about it," he told her. "I mean…." He did something very un-Ginoza-like and massaged the back of his neck in discomfiture. "I _was_ trying to distract myself with reading so my number would go down…sort of working off that 'a watched pot never boils' theory…or what you do to get rid of hiccups…if you just ignore it and let yourself _be_ and _relax_ , you can look up and suddenly your Crime Coefficient's already improved. But…well…thoughts about…Dad…keep shoving into the forefront of my mind. So I guess there's no point in trying to block them." He chuckled mirthlessly. "I'll bet that's what started it all. I just kept pushing him away out of shame, when really I should've reached out to him for guidance from the start…then maybe I wouldn't have been so wracked with paranoia all the time. Still…even when I pushed him away, he still did whatever he could to guide me regardless. He never wanted me to end up like him. But…." Then his voice cracked, broke, and fell away, and he swallowed.

The 98.7 ticked up to 98.8.

"It's fine," Akane broke in hastily, holding up a hand. "You don't have to talk about it anymore, if you don't want to. I get it. I mean…there's still a chance while you're still under one-hundred."

"Ha! Barely."

"Still…."

Then Ginoza looked at her again, and something about him seemed more cheered, somehow. Just a little.

"Look at you. So optimistic." His compliment was sincere, soft with admiration. "You're really something, you know that?"

The way he looked at her, Akane felt something like a bird taking flight in her chest. And then it passed, and now she just felt tight everywhere.

She managed a laugh, though she knew it came out kind of awkward. "Jeez, Mr. Ginoza, I'm not sure you should keep being this nice to me. I might get too used it."

Ginoza raised his eyebrows at her. "Would that be a bad thing?"

"Well, you're usually such a…."

"A hard ass. I know. You can say it."

Akane stared at him, a sound still scraping from her throat while her jaw hung slack, but she couldn't seem to form words for a few seconds until she got over her shock and cleared her throat.

"Ah…ah-ha…well, when you put it like that…."

But then Ginoza snorted what sounded like a laugh, but it was so odd to hear it coming from him. Even so, hearing it, Akane couldn't help herself and snorted a laugh too.

"Come on, Mr. Ginoza…I'd never call anyone a hard ass, you know that."

"Hm. You've got me there. You're too good for words like that."

Then his Crime Coefficient on the display ticked back down to 98.5.

* * *

Akane got in late that night. Or maybe it was early in the morning. Either way, she couldn't even bring herself to switch on Candy—she really wasn't in the mood for a bubbly welcome from a household AI represented by a pink jellyfish.

The second Akane slid her shoes off, she hobbled over to her couch and collapsed onto it, laying sprawled out on her stomach the way she'd do in college when she'd just put herself through the ringer cramming for an exam. Yuki used to say that she was so good at not letting herself get worked up and anxious that she even made the act of cramming look enjoyable rather than cripplingly nerve-wracking.

 _Yuki_...

Before she could stop it, that memory of Makishima slitting Yuki's throat as Yuki begged for her life flashed in Akane's mind. Even when she shut her eyes, it just replayed on a tormenting loop on the inside of her eyelids.

Yet even though she let herself cry, just for a second, before wiping her eyes and shaking it off, her Crime Coefficient didn't spike, even a little.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position and examined her hands. Why did this sense of self control come so easily to her? Was there something…wrong with her? Was she…more like… _Makishima_ …criminally…asymptomatic…?

There wasn't any reason why _all_ criminally asymptomatic people had to be like Maskishima, right? They didn't all have to be egotistical psychopaths, did they?

 _Ugh…._

This was getting to be too much for her to process when she was this tired.

She tipped her head back and breathed in deep, then let her breath out slowly. When she opened her eyes, they landed on Kogami's pack of Spinels she'd fished out of her jacket pocket the other night. She'd left them on the end table beside the couch, tossed them there like she'd been trying to convince herself that they didn't mean anything to her, that they were just a pack of cigarettes and nothing more.

Now, on an impulsive thought, she swiped them off the end table and examined them in the gloom of her apartment. She increased the pressure of her fingers closed around the packaging, garnering a little satisfaction from the sound of the paper crinkling. As she did this, a small whiff of the scent of the tobacco inside was expelled and reached her nose. The moment she smelled it, something about it made Akane feel better than anything like a simple breathing exercise did.

She examined the pack again, holding it up in front of her face. And then, giving into vulnerability, she put it right up to her nose and breathed in the smell of unfiltered tobacco that had hung around Kogami all the time.

And somehow, it cleared her head even better, even as it quickened her heartbeat.

She withdrew the pack from her nose and examined it at eyelevel again, and was just toying with the idea of seeing what would happen if she lit one when her phone for personal calls went off. The display on the screen was flashing Kaori's avatar, a dancing tulip.

Akane flung the Spinels back on the end table and answered the call, bringing it up on holo speaker. "Hey Kaori. What's up? Everything okay?"

 _"_ _Yeah. Everything's fine. Um…I was just calling to see if you had a day off anytime this week?"_

"Yeah, I've got Thursday off."

Actually the whole of Division One had it off. It was just easier to give the entire Division the day when they were so small. They were supposed to be getting some new blood soon though so hopefully the whole day off thing would normalize after that.

With her hands free while the phone sat beside her on the couch projecting the holo of Kaori's avatar for the duration of the call, Akane was able to reach down with both hands and grip both of her feet, hoping she could work out some of the aches wedged in between the bone joints there. She had a feeling though that a long hot bath was the only thing that would really do the trick, even though all she had was a shower.

"Did you wanna do lunch then?" she asked.

 _"_ _Yeah, sure. That sounds great."_ Though Kaori's voice made it sound like her heart wasn't entirely in it.

Akane didn't blame her. This would actually be the first girls' lunch they'd have since Yuki died. They both would be aware of it, even though they'd both fight so hard not to say anything.

She paused though, frowning at the dancing tulip floating over her phone. Then her brow relaxed, and she tried to make it clear in her voice that she was smiling. "Cool. Sounds like a plan. A breather'll be nice, even if it _is_ just for lunch."

 _"_ _Actually, I was just thinking of playing hooky from work that day, so maybe we could go shopping after?"_

"What? You, play hooky?"

 _"_ _I know! I'm terrible."_

And then the two of them were snorting with giggles, and Akane savored this brief moment of refuge from the sorrows of her working life. It even felt, just briefly, liked it did before Yuki had died, before Akane had to take her bereavement and lock it away so it wouldn't interfere with her work, leaving Kaori on her own.

Akane knew that too, which only made her feel even guiltier, deep down.

Even so, her hue turned no darker than cerulean.


	3. Carmine Red

**Chapter Three**

 **Carmine Red**

Akane and Kaori met in the hub of Ikebukuro for lunch for their outing. At first, Akane felt a little stiff, but she could tell that Kaori felt the same, so they both fumbled their way through their, "Hi, how are you?"'s. Akane mused for a moment on finding some way of sneaking in alcohol somehow, even though there was no way she was going to get any here, but then she and Kaori managed to relax enough around each other that they could talk more like how they used to. But even if they were both careful to avoid the subject of Yuki for the present, Akane could feel the specter of their friend beside them, and she had a feeling that Kaori could too.

After that they went shopping in all of the stores they used to shop at back when they were in school along with Yuki, though Akane let Kaori lead the way for the most part. She noticed that her friend was being a little bubblier than usual, and the part of her mind that was still attached to her work kept a close eye on her friend. She wasn't setting off any street scanners, it was true, so it was doubtful that her hue was in any danger of clouding detrimentally, at least for now, but if Akane had learned anything from Kogami and old Masaoka, it wasn't to let a tool meant for human use do all the thinking.

Kaori bought a lot of cute new clothes though, with that same kind of abandon one might exhibit in binging on sweets to chase away blues, and that was enough for Akane to be solicitous. Of course, Kaori had always been a ravenous shopper, so this wasn't too far afield of her usual character either. And despite her concerns, Akane managed to enjoy herself too, if in a more muted way, and even bought a few cute things for herself. Her love of cute, happy, bright things hadn't been diminished by the darker things she had confronted lately, and she found herself feeling just a little proud of that fact.

At the end of it though, when the sun was low in the late afternoon sky, and the two of them were shopped out and starting to head back to the metro station in Ikebukuro, something gray settled over Kaori, and Akane picked up on it almost immediately.

"So…Akane," said Kaori, more subdued than she'd been all day. "Um…so, I hope you're not like…I mean…are you…okay?"

Akane didn't need to ask what she was getting at. "It's helped me to keep most of my focus on work. Not to say that today wasn't a nice breather," she added with a genuine smile.

"Oh." Kaori tried smiling too. "So then…your…hue's okay?"

"Been doing fine so far." Then Akane asked more seriously, "And you? What about your hue?"

"Come on, Akane. You can just check it, right?"

"I prefer asking like a normal person."

Kaori gave a weird chuckle. "Well, okay then." She cleared her throat and looked away, looked at the ground as she and Akane kept walking beside each other down the street, shopping bags in tow. "I've been…undergoing some therapy. I mean…you know…just the standard stuff that's mandatory for anyone who's undergone a trauma…and…well…it's been going okay…I guess…. Only…."

"Only what?" Akane pressed gently.

Kaori heaved a sigh and looked up at the sky instead. "I just catch myself worrying now and then that'll it'll get worse, rather than better. That I'll just end up…over the edge and in an iso facility. Cuz that happens, right? You go through something awful, because awful stuff still happens, people you care about still _die_ …." Her voice caught, just for a moment. "And even though you get the therapy that's supposed to make it better because it's _therapy_ …it doesn't always work for everyone and…." Her voice caught again, like a hiccup, but she couldn't seem to say anything more.

"You're going to be fine," Akane told her, and with conviction too.

Her friend though gave her a surprised glance. "I am?"

"Of course you are. You've got a good head on your shoulders. You've always been very practical and straightforward. And you work hard. When you set your mind to something, no matter how much things suck, you get what you need to done. You're always going on about how less-than-thrilled you are about your job, but from what I hear you're one of the of best people in your field of work. There's no way that therapy like this isn't going to help you get back on track."

"But…isn't it…a bad thing…that I want to get back on track? I mean…I don't know…your job involves dealing with sick people like the bastard that killed Yuki…so…of course your going back to that would be more than the right thing to do…but…me…? What am I doing with my life that means anything? If Yuki can't even be here anymore…she _should_ be here…."

Kaori gasped and then stopped. Akane stopped one step ahead of her and turned to look at her, finding her friend crying, tears welling up in her eyes before they spilled, trickling down her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and drip-dropping in tiny clear beads.

"Hey…" Akane called softly, and she went over and wrapped her free arm that wasn't carrying any shopping bags around her friend's trembling shoulders. Kaori hid in the crook of her neck, relaxing from her rigid demeanor of trying to keep it together, and cried a little more openly. A few passersby gave them uncertain, even uncomfortable glances before hurrying away, but Akane didn't care. She just held her friend tighter.

And after a few gulps of air, Kaori managed to get herself under control, and with a few sniffs looked up from the crook of Akane's neck and met her eyes.

"It's okay for you to get back on track," Akane told her, smiling her kind and gentle smile. "Yuki would scold you for wallowing just for her. So if you think about it, it'd be wrong _not_ to get back on track. We both owe it to Yuki to be happy…if nothing else, then to do it at least for her sake. You know how doom and gloom stuff annoyed her to no end."

A genuine smile broke through as Kaori gave a watery little laugh and finally found it in herself to pull away. "Yeah, you're right. I'll keep that in mind."

She started continuing down the walk towards the metro station, and Akane watched the new, relaxed set of her friend's shoulders, the upright conviction of her retreating back, before she followed and caught up.

A piece of information she had absorbed into her memory floated up to the surface of her mind then. Back in school, she'd read something about the benefits of crying, that it in fact served a purpose to release toxins from the body. Moreover, it had been one of the best ways to relieve stress in a kind of purge, as it were.

One just had to be careful that they didn't get stuck in the crying part, because that meant their emotions were spiraling out of control, rather than being unburdened from their hearts.

Though Kaori seemed a little better even now after having that good little cry, Akane was resolved to keep a close eye on her friend. Not a hovering eye—that was Sibyl's job, anyway—just an attentive one.

She had failed one friend. She wasn't about to fail another.

* * *

Work was a bitch the next day though.

Akane was still short-handed, Ginoza was still in the hospital recovering, and so far, they hadn't gotten any new blood to fill in the gaps left behind by him, Masaoka, Kagari, and…Kogami.

Anymore, thinking about him elicited a heavy sigh from her.

She hated this whole being-a-support-division thing, and her frustration burst into full bloom when she confronted Chief Kasei about it. Honestly, it was easy enough to do, strangely enough because she knew Kasei's secret. One would think that it wouldn't be because of what she knew, but Akane was odd that way.

"This is beyond ridiculous," she told the Chief bluntly, arms folded, as she stood before her desk in her office. "So if you aren't going to put any effort into giving Division One new limbs, I'll handle it myself. I'm no HR expert, but then again, HR just answers to Sibyl anyway, right?"

Kasei regarded her with her usual impassivity, fiddling idly with that Rubik's cube of hers as she sat back in her chair, but a muscle jumped in her jaw, and that was enough to satisfy Akane that she was still managing to get under her skin in a way that made this puppet body of Sibyl acquiesce somewhat to her and her objectives.

Which was why, after a short yet stony silence, Kasei finally said, "Fine. Handle it yourself then. I have every confidence in you."

And she did, it was true.

Which, coming from Kasei, still sounded kind of like a threat.

Though Akane, as usual, was too fed up to care.

Akane stayed late that night, scrolling through profile after profile for every inmate in the iso facility. She went through the database herself, starting with running them through Sybil to narrow things down to the specific qualities she was looking for in an Enforcer. Even so, she herself was going completely on instinct here as she went through the narrowed results that Sybil spit out for her.

By midnight, she had it narrowed down to three, all them showing Psycho-Pass readings that made them ideal matches for Enforcer work. But of the three, there was one that stuck out the most, perhaps because of the unassuming air Akane picked up from his headshot.

Daikichi Akabayashi.

From what she read, he sounded like the kind of guy who could solve Rubik's cubes by the basketful in his sleep.

His past history demonstrated a high-functioning mind, but the kind that could fall prey to depression in thinking too much about how things life can go wrong. Akane decided to run his values through the Sibyl System, and the results pegged him for a good potential fit for Enforcer work.

She found she was pleased to see this, and made it a point to make a stopover at the isolation facility to have a chat with him first thing in the morning.

* * *

The last time she had come here, Kogami had been with her. They had needed the advice of someone with a mind as artistically twisted as the culprit behind the killings at that all-girls academy. When Kogami had rather off-handedly said that one day, he would end up here as well, once he'd outlived his use to society as an Enforcer, Akane had felt a twinge of sadness. She felt that twinge again just remembering it, and then hopeful, that after all that time accepting a dismal fate like that, he'd managed to escape the system. So even if he ended up dying out there, at least he'd die free.

Though she preferred to think of him as still alive rather than dead.

After getting her identity confirmed and given Inspector's access into the facility, she communicated her need to speak with the inmate named Daikichi Akabayashi. The staff in charge of this acquiesced accordingly and one of them led her to a room split by a glass window. On either side of the glass was a set of chairs and table space. Akane sat in one of the chairs on her side, and through the glass she could see the door on the other side open, and another of the facility's staff leading the young man named Daikichi Akabayashi through it. The staff member had him sit in one of the chairs on his side, so now he and Akane faced each other.

The first thing she noticed was the bright red stripe of hair dye shot through his dark hair.

Thanks to an audio feedback system, Akane and Akabayashi would be able to hear each other clearly from each other's side. As uncertain as he seemed, there was also a cautious inquisitiveness to him. Akane found she wasn't surprised about this.

"It's good to meet you, Mr. Akabayashi," she said. "I'm Inspector Akane Tsunemori."

At this, Akabayashi's ears pricked up at this, and then a grin spread across his face and he leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head, turning rather devil-may-care. "You've come to ask me if I wanna become an Enforcer, haven't you?"

Akane couldn't help being amused. "I have, actually. Figured that out on your own, huh?"

"Well, it's more than obvious," said Akabayashi. "You're an Inspector, I'm a Latent Criminal. Latent Criminals can be recruited to the PSB as Enforcers."

"I could just be here to question you about a case I'm working on."

"Yeah, but you opened up our conversation with a pleasantry: 'it's good to meet you, Mr. Akabayashi'. You wanted to approach me favorably. Like you would with a sales pitch."

Akane raised her eyebrows at him, and Akabayashi raised his back at her.

Oh yes, she made a good choice with this one. She'd still need to get approval from Ginoza. And the Chief, of course.

Assuming he agreed to take the job.

And naturally, reading her correctly, he asked her, "There are risks to the job, right?"

"That's more than obvious," Akane told him, rather bluntly. "You don't need to an excellent deductor to figure that out."

"But with Sibyl in our lives, what risk can there really be?" Akabayashi challenged, and rather sarcastically at that.

Akane took a breath. "Sibyl…yes, well…." Her mind flickered back to that cold, sterile room full of amoral, compassionless brains deep in the bowels beneath Nona Tower that virtually no one knew about, except those permitted to know and live.

People like her.

Even so.

She looked up and gave Akabayashi her smile again, but this time, it was steely, and she could tell that Akabayashi could see that.

"Every system still needs its safety nets. And the Inspectors and Enforcers, the humans who operate the Dominators…they're that safety net." Then she added, "And Sibyl might make her judgements, but in my experience, she can't really do what she does without us."

Akabayashi knitted his brow thoughtfully. "Are you saying then…that Sibyl depends on us?"

"Well, without us, Sibyl would have no reason to exist," said Akane simply.

"Hm." Akabayashi considered this a moment, and then his grin came back. "You know, working for someone like you could be pretty fun. I think being a soldier for justice on the side would make that worth it."

Akane warmed to his enthusiasm. "It is worth it, Mr. Akabayashi. It's definitely worth it."

* * *

Akane was just finishing feeding Dime when she got an alert message that informed her that Ginoza had been moved from a room in the recovery ward to a room in the physical therapy ward. So she made a point to go and visit him the next day on the pretense of getting his opinion on her choice of Daikichi Akabayashi as a new Enforcer with Division One.

After she stuck a slot in her schedule for it, she looked down at Dime devouring his kibble at her feet. She considered the precious dog, with his beautiful coat and his big, adorable eyes that looked up at her when he seemed to sense her watching him while he ate. She smiled and knelt down beside him to give his ear a scratch.

Satisfied that that was all she was going to do, he turned his attention back to his food.

"I don't know what it is, Dime," she murmured, moving her hand to stroke the fur along his quivering back, "but I think it's quite sweet that Mr. Ginoza has a dog like you."

She went home that night with a rather happier feeling than she had in what felt like a while, and brought that disposition in with her when she went to check in on Ginoza the next day.

She found Ginoza in the middle of a physical therapy session with an AI physical therapy program.

He turned to her upon her entrance into the room, and his expression seemed to light up a bit.

"Tsunemori," he greeted, giving his new mechanical arm another good flex per the AI's instructions.

"Hey there," said Akane, appreciative of her superior's rare show of physical strength in the way he moved his new arm. "Getting a good feel for the mechanics?" she asked.

"More or less," said Ginoza.

Then something flickered in his eyes that for a split-second reminded Akane of that look she'd seen in Kogami's eyes when he'd faced down that rogue drone with his teeth bared like a wolf's. Like there was something about his new arm and the mechanical strength that it implied that pleased a shadow of something surfacing in Ginoza's personality.

Then it disappeared as he quit flexing his fingers and he looked at Akane again. Not just looked at her, but smiled at her.

"I think it'll do well enough," he assessed. Then he considered the arm again, and added, "You know what some kid doctor said? She said it reminded her of some character's mechanical arm in some old manga."

"What manga was that?"

" _Fullmetal_ …Something. I dunno. I'd never heard of it before. She was pretty excited about it though. One of those 'old-takus', you know."

"Well, that's something," said Akane with a hopeful grin.

"I suppose so." Ginoza performed another exercise with it per the AI, twisting the joints around as far as they would go. "If anything, it makes me feel a bit more like a superhero."

"Oh? That's rather charming."

Ginoza paused and glanced up at her, and perhaps it was just her imagination, but it looked for a moment like his cheeks flushed. Just for a moment.

"You think so?" he asked, sounding strangely earnest about it.

"Mm, yeah," Akane told him honestly.

The corner of Ginoza's mouth quirked, and then he went back to the exercises the AI was giving him at the its prodding.

 _"Mr. Ginoza…."_

"Right, right, sorry." Ginoza asked the machine to repeat its instructions and then followed through with them with the arm with flawless precision.

Akane laughed quietly under her breath and then pulled out her tablet, opened it up to Daikichi Akabayashi's profile, and held it out to Ginoza. "When you get a minute," she said.

Ginoza glanced over his shoulder and, understanding what she was probably getting at, reached over and paused the physical therapy program, muttering, "Eh, that's enough for today." He took the tablet from Akane as he stepped off the platform in front of the AI and scrolled down the screen.

Akane watched him as he put on his calculation face, a little more like the old Ginoza, which was strangely a comfort in some ways. Then he glanced up at her.

"This is one you're thinking of recruiting as an Enforcer?"

Akane internally braced herself against the skepticism in his tone. "Yes."

"I see." Ginoza turned back to the tablet and scanned the screen again. Then he gave Akane a thankfully approving smile as he finally handed it back to her. "Good choice. I like him. He…reminds me of Kagari…a little. If Kagari was a little more arrogant. I like your comment here about him being the sort of person who could probably solve Rubik's cubes in his sleep by the basketful."

"Oh. Well, thank you." Akane took the tabet from him and tucked it back in her bag. "Though I think 'a little more arrogant' is putting it mildly in Akabayashi's case," she added with another laugh.

When she turned back to her superior though she was taken aback at the sight of him staring at his mechanical hand…with inexplicable tears rolling down the sides of his face. Ginoza himself appeared shocked to see them there.

"What the…? I don't…." Ginoza raised his glistening eyes to meet Akane's, and the falling tears rolled like raindrops down a windowpane.

"Mr….Ginoza…" Akane breathed.

Ginoza blinked and then shook himself, turning away. " _Shit_. _What the hell_?" he growled. He buried his face in the palm of his hand that was still flesh and blood.

Unbidden, Akane's heart caught in her throat, mouth going dry. Reflexively, she reached out a hand, but stopped short of touching Ginoza's shoulder. Yet she couldn't find anything to say. She found herself back in the hyper oats facility, stumbling across Ginoza broken and bleeding on the ground as he collapsed atop Masaoka's body.

"Aw, hell. Damn it." Then Ginoza's shoulders shook. "Who am I trying to fool? It's my fault…isn't it…?" he croaked before he let out a gasping sob. "It's all my fault…."

Akane withdrew further into herself, her insides shaking to see her superior like this. She'd _never_ seen him like this. This was the last thing she had expected to be privy to, even with everything that had happened.

"I let this happen…." Then Ginoza hiccupped. Actually _hiccupped_. Like a child who was crying would hiccup. "I couldn't…handle what was happening in my head…I couldn't get my _shit_ together…and I started to fall apart…and you…." He raised his eyes and looked at Akane again, and this time the tears were thick and unmistakable. "I left you all alone…to deal with everything…because I couldn't…and because of that…Kagari…Kogami… _Dad_ …."

Akane was drawing a blank. She didn't know what to do. She knew what she'd do if this were Kaori. Hell, she'd done such a thing for her just recently.

And then she thought of Yuki, and her own eyes pricked with tears before she could help herself. And she recalled again that bit about the relief that crying tears could bring.

So she let her own tears flow. But she grit her teeth and made sure Ginoza didn't miss it.

"Don't you dare," she told him, so fiercely that Ginoza could only stare at her, his own tears drip-dropping listlessly like dew off leaves. "Don't you dare blame yourself. Because if you do…then I…." She gulped, ignoring the voice in her head that tried to tell her she might be crossing a line here. "Then I won't forgive you."

There was a heavy drop of silence, and then Ginoza rasped, "But…Ak…an…e…."

Akane pressed onward, in spite of herself. "And you _know_ Mr. Masaoka would never forgive you. And Kagari would laugh at you mercilessly, damn him. And Kogami would just call you pathetic." She had her hands balled so tightly into fists at her side that her fingernails were cutting her palms, but she didn't care. Her formerly stuttering heart was now pounding in her chest and in her ears. Unlike with Kaori, she had to be tougher on someone like Ginoza. Someone who needed the tough treatment. Who wouldn't take anything less from her, short of her actually smacking him, but even in her passionate state of mind she was aware that smacking him definitely _would_ cross a line.

Only today Ginoza was being particularly stubborn.

He turned away from her again, and of all things, let himself sink slowly to his knees, burying his face in his hand once more.

"What does it matter?" he mumbled, letting out another, quieter sob. "I can't even forgive _myself_ …."

Akane's own tears kept falling, but she was stumped for anything else she could say. Except for, "How can you…? Don't you realize…you're just hammering the nail in the coffin acting like this…?"

Ginoza sniffed and lifted his eyes, but his mouth was still hidden behind his hand. "Oh, I'm more than aware, Inspector."

"Then _why_?!" Akane snapped before she could stop herself. "You…fatalistic… _idiot_!"

In the past, Ginoza had certainly gotten on her nerves, even gotten on her bad side, and they had more than once butt their heads over how to do things as Inspectors, but this was the first time...that Akane was outright _pissed_ with him. And it wasn't even remotely out of anything akin to animosity. If anything it was because she'd come to care about him, perhaps in the same way Ginoza and Kogami had come to care about each other as friends and colleagues themselves, as it vaguely dawned on her in the back of her mind then why it was that out of all of the Enforcers, it was with either Kogami or Masaoka that Ginoza would get the most angry.

Ginoza knitted his brows, his eyes hardening, though with the tears in them this only served to liken them to cold emeralds, an effect that was very affecting on Akane for just a moment amidst her roiling ire with him.

"All right then," he challenged her. "You wanna lecture me? Then lecture me. Save me with the power of your oh-so-optimistic words."

"Come on now, Mr. Ginoza…."

"Much good they did for hopeless cases like Ko…."

"For goodness's sake, Ginoza, don't make this harder than this has to be! You know, it didn't occur to me until just now, but you're actually more like Kogami than you probably ever realized!"

"In that case, then I think you've lost your own argument that I'm an idiot for being fatalistic about this."

He still had tears in his eyes, but he'd stopped actively crying. Now he was just giving her an utterly livid expression. Like he was trying so hard to suddenly become as unsalvageable as possible, so that he might believe it when she _did_ manage to save him.

And then his mouth curled into a humorless smile that was, of all things, cruel. The sight of it turned Akane's stomach. Moreover, she was all the more bewildered at where all of this was coming from. Not a few moments ago he was perfectly amiable, and now here he was, swinging from pathetic to hostile on the turn of a dime.

"Go on. Call me an idiot again," he goaded.

"You…."

"Just _look_ at me, for crying out! Don't pretend you can really save… _this_ —" He shook out his prosthetic "—with that…sweet goddamn naivety of yours! You can't _save_ everyone Tsunemori! Haven't you figured that out by _now_?!"

This was different than his usual cynicism. This was just mean. Moreover, it was pain that he was inflicting on himself as much as he was on her.

Because all of it…came from a place of pure hurt.

She could see it now. His thoughts touching so briefly on Kagari a moment ago had triggered something he'd been trying to hold back inside of himself ever since his father died, and he'd learned that Kogami had gone MIA and he'd had to square with the fact that Kagari had gotten himself killed too, and it further occurred to her that this edge of cruelty was a result of how much he was already hating himself for acting out like this, for the aspects of his emotional state and how losing the handle he'd had on himself had indeed contributed to the crack that had formed in the Division One Akane had first met.

 _Guess I'm gonna have to cross that line after all_ , she thought sadly, and before Ginoza could properly react, except to widen his eyes at the idea that she would attempt this in the first place, she raised her hand and then brought it down, smacking him clean across his face.

She hit him so hard that it knocked him aside, knocking the breath out of him, out of her too for that matter. Numbly, in the aftermath, he reached up and touched the red mark she left on his cheek with his trembling fingers, and then he gaped up at her, all anger gone. And then he lowered his eyes in raw shame, and the tears came back. But this time, his cries were silent.

"Akane, I'm sorry," he muttered. "You should…you should just leave me here."

She knew he didn't mean just leave him there on the floor. Or if he did, that wasn't the _only_ thing he meant.

"You _damn idiot_ ," she hissed at him under her breath, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. "Like I would do something like leave you." Then she was the one who hiccupped. "I'm not losing you too," she told him, her voice cracking.

"I said _leave me_ ," Ginoza reiterated, this time in a tone of dangerously quiet warning.

Akane little heeded this, even as a frightened part of herself deep inside was pleading with him to come to his senses. "I'll leave you just for now. But you get your act together. You say you should've had it together when you had the chance? Well now's your chance. Seriously, what the hell…."

She turned away, gathering up her bag and bristling, quivering with whimpering cries that still escaped her, furious as she was.

" _Damn it_!"

Behind her a loud bang nearly made her leap out of her skin and stopped her dead outside the door. And when she whirled around, she saw that Ginoza had taken it upon himself to lash out with his mechanical arm and run the fist of it into the floor, cracking into the linoleum to the concrete underneath. And then he let out a wounded, growling cry and curled further into himself, shaking again with violent sobs.

There it was. The kind of crying that spiraled out of control, that took someone over, possessed them like a demon, making it impossible for them to break themselves out of its vicious cycle.

And according to his stats on the nearby monitor, he was pushing 99 hard, almost like she could hear the number screaming as it shot up and threatened to break into 100.

Feeling helpless, Akane reached out to the alert button on the wall by the door and rang for the closest mental health aide. There was nothing else she could do. Nothing she said or did was doing anything for him anymore like it was before, and she could only watch as the aide swooped in and stuck Ginoza in the arm with a sedative and then caught him as he collapsed with a pained gasp.

"I'm sorry, Ginoza," she whispered, wiping away the rest of her tears with the heel of her free hand, finding herself achingly wishing in fact that she was the one who could catch him as he fell. "I'm _so sorry_ …I shouldn't have started to walk away like that… _I'm sorry_ … _please forgive me_ …."

* * *

Akane dropped into the seat at her desk after hanging up her bag on the back of her chair. For a moment she took a deep breath and massaged her temples, trying to calm herself.

Dealing with Ginoza like that had drained her more than she'd thought possible. And while comforting Kaori had left her feeling fulfilled the way a good friend who's helped another good friend would feel, with Ginoza she felt nothing but nearly hopeless for his fate. A fate he seemed unwilling at this point to avoid, as though all his former drive to do so had evaporated in those few moments where he had just…cracked. Out of the blue.

And she'd struck him.

And probably just made things worse. No it had definitely made things worse. She never thought she could be so horrible to someone, but there it was. For a moment she let herself indulge in self-loathing before she moved on from it.

Then, mustering up what energy she could as she managed to put it aside for now, she stretched and cracked her knuckles before buckling down to have another look-see at those other two potentials Enforcer candidates of the three, including Akabayashi, that the system had initially helped her narrow down in her initial weed-through.

Of the two, there was a Kaguya Fukui, which in name alone sounded like a winner. The only potentially grave issue was the young woman's proclivity to Attention Deficit Disorder, which had in all probability heavily influenced her Psycho-Pass. According to her file, she could've had an easier time of things if she'd just taken her medication, but apparently she'd come to a point in her rebellious youth where she'd started flushing those pills down the toilet, refusing to take what she referred to her as her "brainwashing meds".

Akane could see where she was coming from.

She was someone who could mentally tell the difference between a mind that was medicated into complacent focus and one that was given freer reign in its lack-of-focus. That said, unfortunately that lack of focus was in correlation with her rise in anxiety, and despite a last-ditch effort from her parents to intervene and get her back on medication, her Crime Coefficient had managed to rise and her hue had managed to cloud enough that the irreversible damage was done and she'd had to be confined to iso, where apparently she was content with smoking a hookah all day. Which was evidently more fashionable and more agreeable to a non-conformist mindset than ADD medication.

That said, she had something that made her think of Kogami, actually. If he were here, he'd probably intuit that she had guts, seeing how she managed to keep off her meds for so long, and not only that but keep the secret that she was keeping off her meds for as long as she did.

So…clever _and_ gutsy.

Akane went about making some notes on her tablet. As she went about this, she reached over and snatched up her coffee cup, only to notice that it was empty save for a few drops. With a sigh she pushed away from her desk and, after a moment's thought, decided instead of hot coffee to go down to one of the communal breakrooms and get a can of milk coffee from the vending machine.

A bit lost in thought on her way down, what had passed between her and Ginoza earlier that day still weighing heavy on her mind, she didn't pay as much attention as she should have as she marched down the hall in her loafers, which caused her to collide right into someone else headed in the opposite direction.

"Oh!" Akane staggered back, stammering out an apology and bowing profusely once she regained her equilibrium. "I'm so sorry, please forgive me! I wasn't looking where I was going!"

"No, not at all," said the other person, a man, and judging by the build and bulk of him when she got a proper look at him, it was a wonder she didn't break upon impact with him.

Then she experienced a flicker of recognition and her cheeks colored.

"Oh, Enforcer Togane." Akane bowed again. "Please excuse me for bumping into you, I was simply lost in thought."

Enforcer Sakuya Togane shook his head and grinned at her, giving a casual flip of the long dark hair that fell over his eyes. "I wouldn't expect any less of the one and only Inspector Tsunemori," he told her quite genially.

This gave Akane pause and she blinked at him. "Huh? I don't follow. Do I…have a reputation as a…space cadet or something?"

Togane snorted a laugh. "Not at all, Inspector. But you do like to dance to the beat of your own drum, don't you? These things circulate around these offices, you know."

Akane rubbed the back of her head discomfitedly. "Yes, I'm aware of how office environments work, Enforcer Togane."

"Anyway," said Togane, cheerfully dismissive, lifting up a tablet in his hand, "I was just on my way to deliver something to Inspector Suzuki. Though I might've detoured a bit and nabbed something from the breakroom vending machine." With his other hand he lifted up a can of a fizzy sour fruit drink.

Akane managed a kind of awkward laugh. "What do you know? I was on my way there myself."

As she and Togane took their leave of each other, the Enforcer lifted his drink can to Akane in a strange kind of a salute as he continued on his way down the hall in the opposite direction of her.

Akane stared after him a moment, tilting her head to one side. She hadn't really spoken to Enforcer Togane straight up until just now, but as far as first impressions went, he struck her as perplexingly charming for someone who was a Latent Criminal.

Sure Kagari had had his own brand of flair and charm, but Togane…it like, when it came to being one of the many Enforcers imprisoned within Nona Tower, he seemed as though he were actually…happy about it.


	4. Bottle Green

**AN: For those of you have read the originally published version of Chapter Three, I had forgotten that Sho Hinakawa doesn't actually show up with Division One until the beginning of Season 2, which is eighteen months after the events of the conclusion of Season 1. So I have edited him out for now and put Daikichi Akabayashi (my own OC) in there instead, with just the mention of another OC to come, Kaguya Fukuin. But for those of you who read Chapter Three and are only aware of Akane having a conversation with Akabayashi (and not Hinakawa) then you can ignore this whole note and pretend it never even happened. :)**

* * *

 **Chapter Four**

 **Bottle Green**

 _"Akane?"_

 _Akane turned around, and across the dark negative space, she saw Yuki standing there, looking at her with deep concern._

 _"Akane!" Yuki dashed over and closed the distance between them, taking Akane by her hands. "Akane, what's wrong?"_

 _"Yuki…" Akane croaked. "But…you're dead…."_

 _She couldn't help it. In her shock, all her mind could think to do was spout the obvious._

 _Yuki however smiled like Akane had just told her that they'd have to cancel an outing because of the weather. "You think I'd let something like that stop me from being worried about you? Now more than ever?" she added, turning strangely serious._

 _Then she pulled away, turning towards a window, a square of light, staring out of it with a faraway look in her eyes._

 _Akane though had this urgent sense of needing to keep her from slipping away, a desperate, nagging feeling that something bad was about to happen all over again._

 _She reached out a hand to her. "Yuki…."_

 _So many words quivered on her tongue. The most prominent ones were those that strung together to form: "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."_

 _Yuki turned to her though and smiled again, as though she'd seen something quite pleasant, looking out of that square of light. "Akane, no matter what, we'll always be friends. What happened, well…even_ you _can't save everyone. I understand that."_

 _"Wait…that sounds…familiar…."_

 _"Just make sure Kaori doesn't go too nuts, okay? What am I saying, I know I can count on you. I always could. I knew that even when I died, underneath all that fear."_

 _Yuki's hand trembled, just for a moment, and she put a hand to her throat, where a marring line marked where it had been slit._

 _"These things happen," she said, a little more detachedly._

 _Akane was reminded of the "conversation" they'd had when she'd been questioning herself after the Sibyl System had revealed its true form to her._

 _And, as if on cue, a new voice answered, "They do indeed."_

 _With the gracefulness of a dancer, Shogo Makishima slipped an arm around Yuki's waist and pulled her to him, leaning into her ear like a lover. But in that cool, emotionless way he always did, with that smile that was empty apart from a vague amusement._

 _Yuki yelped and tried to get away, but Makishima held fast, lifting his eyes to Akane as he did._

 _"Hello again, Inspector," he greeted silkily. "Welcome, to our little meeting of the dead. Tell me…how does it feel to think that I and your friend have both crossed over into a place you can't reach? Would you like me to lie and tell you that Yuki Funahara is in bliss, while I'm burning in some storied inferno?"_

 _"M-Makishima…." Akane felt herself go taut with anger, and suddenly she found herself gripping her Dominator in her hands, her finger on the trigger._

 _Makishima chuckled, Yuki wriggling like a frightened cat in his arms, begging him to get away from her._

 _"No, lies don't suit you. You prefer the truth, and I must admit, you are admirably one of those people who can swallow the ugliest of truths and move on. I did like_ that _about you. So…I'll let you in on a little secret that only those who've died know: there is no Heaven or Hell, there is only the Void, and we_ all _go there, good and evil alike. For you see, all are equal in the eyes of death." Makishima pressed Yuki closer to him with one arm, while with his free hand he snapped out that little blade of his. He lifted it to Yuki's throat, pressed the edge of it against her flesh. He was going to slit it, cut through her trachea like he did before when he'd killed her._

 _Yuki cried out. "Akane!"_

 _"Yuki!" Akane lifted the Dominator an aimed._

 _But as it had before, in real life, the gun-shaped hunk of hardware refused to give a reading on Makishima that matched the atrocity he was committing._

 _"Are you going to make the same mistake again, Inspector?" he goaded, his words slithering into her ear like a serpent's. "Tsk, tsk. And here I thought you'd grown as a person."_

 _Then his empty eyes flickered at something over Akane's shoulder._

 _Akane followed his glance, turning around to face who had appeared behind her. "K-Kogami…."_

 _It was really him. Pointing a gun. A real gun. Right at her._

 _No._

 _At Makishima._

 _"Wait…" she tried to say._

 _Kogami though gave her a humorless and pitying smile. "I'm sorry, Inspector," he told her in that gruff and blunt way of his. "I'm afraid I can't do that. Unlike you…I can't forgive people. Certainly not him."_

 _Then Kogami fired. The images of Makishima and Yuki shattered and disappeared, Makishima laughing into nothingness._

 _Akane fully round on Kogami, aiming her Dominator at him this time._

 _Rather predictably though, Kogami put up no resistance against this. He raised his hands and dropped the still-smoking gun in surrender._

 _"I'm done," he told her. "Now, you do what you have to do. And everything will balance itself out again."_

 _Akane's finger shook on the trigger, and her mind went numb even as she heard that calm and collected female voice in her ear…Sibyl's voice…she could almost feel the vibrations of the thoughts of two-hundred-plus disembodied, criminally asymptomatic, psychopathic brains computing their final judgement._

"Crime Coefficient…over three-hundred…Lethal Eliminator…aim carefully, and eliminate the target…."

 _Akane's heart was about to burst in her chest. It hurt so much to do this, she didn't think she could survive. Everything inside her would rather fling the Dominator away, run to him and fling her arms around him, try to bring out the warmth she knew he still had inside him, the warmth she had peeked at when he'd look at her a certain way, if only for a moment and only when he'd seemed to think that she hadn't been able to notice._

 _Bring out that warmth and hold it close to her, a light that she could hold close to her heart and protect._

 _But even as she cried out to stop herself, cried out as fiercely as she had that first day when she'd fired on Kogami for the first time to stop him eliminating the hostage they'd rescued, she remembered her words to Chief Kasei, the conviction in them as she proclaimed that she would accept whatever judgment Sibyl passed upon Kogami._

"I'll point the Dominator myself…."

 _Her finger squeezed the trigger._

 _And she fired._

"Kogami!" Akane flew awake, bolting up in bed and reaching out into the darkness of her bedroom. After she came to terms with the fact that she'd just been dreaming, her first impulse was to find Ginoza and talk to him.

But that wasn't an option at the moment. After the way things had ended when she spoke to him the day before, the idea of trying to talk to him again turned her stomach like it had when he'd acted so cruelly toward her. Sure, Ginoza could indeed be a hard-ass, but he wasn't cruel either. At least not on purpose, not at his core.

No, he was just angry. And upset. And it was more than obvious that he hadn't had the chance—or perhaps hadn't allowed himself the chance—to properly grieve for all that had been taken away from him.

Perhaps she herself hadn't even properly grieved Yuki yet, even as she had experienced a kind of catharsis in that moment when she'd had Makishima unconscious at her feet in Nona Tower and could've bashed his head in with that helmet at any time. How she had seriously considered it, just for a split-second.

If old Masaoka were still alive, it was him she'd have turned to instead. But if he were here, then Ginoza wouldn't be where he was now. Who else could she talk to about this? Who else would understand?

Well, Kogami. But with him it was the same problem, more or less. He wasn't dead, like Masaoka, as far as she knew anyway, but he wasn't here either. And again, she had a feeling that if he was here, then maybe Ginoza wouldn't be struggling in the sucking tar pit of his own clouding Psycho-Pass. She herself was half tempted to join him, right as even now she was trying to reach out a hand to pull him out, because the loss of Kogami opened a painful canyon in her chest.

She didn't know it was possible to want someone to be with her so badly, but there it was. Struggling against the burning pain in her chest, she threw the covers off of herself, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and went to where she was keeping the letter he had written her in the drawer of her little desk. She took it out and read over it, even though she'd memorized the words by heart. It was more that she felt a momentary comfort to trace her fingers over his writing. She swore she could almost feel him in every stroke of the pen.

The aches became more awake inside her though. She lowered the letter and spotted the Spinels she was keeping with the letter. She set the letter aside and picked up the pack of cigarettes instead. She pressed the package to her nose, deeply inhaling all that she had left of Kogami, that heavy smell of those cigarettes.

But it only widened the chasm inside her. Her knees shook and gave beneath her, and she sank to the floor, much in the way Ginoza had earlier, and she clutched the Spinels to her chest and shook. More desperately than ever, she just wanted to fall back and have Kogami catch her in his arms.

Thinking of this, her heart settled on the last hazy memory she had of Kogami before he disappeared on her. She knew… _knew_ …that after Makishima had run off after failing to kill her…Kogami had picked her up in his arms and carried her to where she'd be safe…. She focused on everything she could remember, how warm he'd been, the sound of his heartbeat against her ear, of his breathing. And then, the way he'd gently laid her down, and then she'd looked up at the sound of empty bullet shells clanking on the paved ground as he snapped a freshly loaded cartridge into the revolver.

 _"No…don't do it…please…" she pleaded with him._

 _Kogami looked at her one last time, and in his eyes, she could see…it was like he knew Makishima had tried to shoot her, and that had there had been at least one bullet left in that gun…she'd be dead now, just like Masaoka was._

 _"Sorry…this is between me and him now…."_

And then he was gone.

"Kogami…Kogami please…. Damn you…."

 _Stop this. Stop it. You're stronger than this, remember? Kogami saw that. You hold onto that. Hold onto it._

He was out there. She could almost see him in front of her, crashing desperately through the wilderness, probably exhausted, adrenaline running high, but alive. Though she hoped that by now he had already somehow gotten out of the country and that whatever wilderness he was braving was elsewhere. And although "elsewhere" was a death trap of its own with how dangerous it was in other countries, most systems out there broken and hemorrhaging, Kogami didn't go down easy.

He was free now, free of a system that he no longer had a place in, that had failed him, anyway, when you got right down to it. A hound broken from its leash, who had made a dash for the chain link fence where he'd dug underneath and wriggled his way out.

So she didn't cry. She managed to get herself under control when she focused just on her breathing, and eventually she was able to relax enough that she could set the Spinels and the letter aside and crawl, if a bit depressedly, back into bed. In the morning, Candy woke her up with a cheery, "Rise and shine, Akane!", and the pink jellyfish floating above her declared that she had a nice and lovely hue in the shade of Powder Pink.

For some reason this made Akane's face grow warm, and then she thought for a moment about the dream she'd had the night before, and then how badly she wanted to help Ginoza and helpless as to whom she could turn.

She threw her blankets over her face and curled into herself, even while Candy shrieked at her that it was time to get up or she was going to be late.

"Ugh, I screwed up." Akane felt like she was back to that morning she'd woken up after her very first assignment and she got rammed with the truck of regretful recollections.

But, as she was wont to do, she processed how she felt about this, and, knowing that dwelling on it wouldn't change anything about it now, and that the best thing she could do was figure out what she could do now to make it better, and deciding to focus on that, she huffed and threw the covers back off, waving a hand at Candy and telling her, "Okay, okay, I'm up, I'm up."

* * *

Before she went in for the morning shift, she stopped by Ginoza's apartment to feed Dime, and to water Ginoza's plants. Since her first visit, after she'd fed Dime, she'd discovered further in that Ginoza kept a few little potted plants—a small fern in the kitchen window above the sink, and then bigger pots of daffodils and irises and other grassy flora on a deck outside.

So after she fed the yipping husky, she went into the kitchen, filled a glass, and tipped a bit of water into each of the plants. She noticed however with some disappointment that the daffodils were looking a bit…withery.

"Oh no," she moaned under her breath. Maybe she was watering that one too much? Or not enough? She wasn't sure. Plants weren't her forte. But she'd feel terrible if any of Ginoza's plants withered. She really wanted him to come home to a happy, healthy dog and plants that were still beautiful and thriving.

She delicately touched the petal of one of the droopy daffodils, and she thought again regretfully of the way Ginoza had collapsed when the aide had hit him with the sedative.

Then she decided to err on the side of caution and not water the daffodils anymore, seeing as how the soil was already still pretty moist from when she'd last been here. With that, she heaved a resigned sigh and drew herself up, reclaiming her resolve as she always did.

And now she was resolved that no matter what happened, she wasn't going to leave Ginoza behind. Even if they locked him away in iso, if he got slapped with the Latent Criminal label, she'd be sure to look out for him in any way she could. Even if he didn't decide then to come back as an Enforcer.

After that conversation they'd had when she'd first seen him in his recovery room after they'd fitted him with the arm, she had felt a friendly chemistry awaken between them, an amiability that hadn't been there before because he had been so stiff, save for those rare moments when he would tell her that she did well while on the job, like after they'd closed up the Drone Case, or when the two of them would briefly put their heads together as fellow Inspectors, like when they staked out Talisman's CommuField during the Talisman Case.

But she was getting ahead of herself.

He wasn't a Latent Criminal. He hadn't crossed that line, not yet.

She hoped not, anyway.

* * *

Later at CID headquarters in Nona Tower, Akane went in to see Karanamori in the analysis lab.

"Oh, good morning, Inspector." The analyst looked up from her massive block of computer monitors, a lit cigarette in the corner of her mouth. She took it out and held it between her fingers as she flicked some ash off into an ashtray. As she leaned back in her chair, she crossed her legs and gave Akane a genial smile. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Mmm, I thought I'd procrastinate actually getting to work for a bit," Akane managed to joke. "Do you have a minute?" she added, discreetly peeking around to see if Kunizuka was here.

"Sure, I've got lots of minutes. Got something on your mind?" the analyst asked perceptively.

"Yeah." Akane dropped down onto the leather couch behind Karanomori. She caught a glimpse of Akabayashi's headshot on one of the computer monitors, and guessed that Karanomori had taken it upon herself to read over his file now that it was available in the MWPSB database.

Then she cleared her throat.

"I uh…went to see Mr. Ginoza yesterday."

"Oh yeah? How's he doing?"

"Not so good. And I…think I might've made it worse."

Karanamori stared at her and then snorted a laugh. "You? Make it worse? I find that hard to believe."

"Well…would you believe that we…had a bit of an argument? And I don't mean just the way we constantly bicker about how to do things. I mean…." Just remembering it, Akane's throat closed up and her eyes stung. She stopped speaking altogether, surprised that something like this would affect her like this.

Karanomori watched her carefully, her burning cigarette poised in her fingers.

Akane's eyes welled up before she could stop and she hastily wiped at them. "Sorry," she croaked quietly.

"Don't worry about it," said Karanomori with a soft and sympathetic smile. Then, with the hand that held her cigarette, she ran the pad of her thumb across her forehead as she thought for a moment. "I can see how that would upset you though. He's always been the prickly sort, so…well, getting too close runs the risk of getting yourself pricked."

"True," Akane admitted, remembering the confrontation she and Ginoza had had out in the hall during the Drone Case, and she had (perhaps rather heedlessly in hindsight) asked him if there was some bad blood between him and Masoaka, back before she knew either about Ginoza's father being a Latent Criminal or about that father being Masaoka, and the look he'd given would have frozen Hell itself.

Then Karanomori snorted another laugh, which made Akane knit her brow in mild confusion amid how upset she still was.

"What?" she asked.

"I just had a thought. Gino's rather _like_ a cactus. Which is even funnier when you think he used to own one."

"Own one? A cactus? You mean like…he kept one…to like…have one?"

Karanomori raised her eyebrows at Akane and then outright laughed. "God, you're cute. All due respect, Inspector," she added. "But yes, Gino used to have a little potted cactus."

"Oh?"

"Then Enforcer Sasayama did something to it. I don't exactly remember. But yeah…that didn't go over well for him. Only time I saw Sasayama sincerely respect Gino like a good Enforcer should."

At this, Akane managed a small smile. She felt a nostalgic warmth curl into her heart at hearing about such things about Ginoza, and hearing mention of Sasayama again, Kogami's good friend and who's cruel and gruesome death had catalyzed his spiral into a darkness he was unable to shake off.

"That's…kind of adorable," she said. "That Ginoza had a cactus, I mean. I did notice he kept quite a few plants in his apartment. I've been…trying to water them. Sounds like he likes plants as much as he does collecting coins."

"Oh yeah. I suppose when you think about it, it is rather charming," Karanomori mused.

That warmth she was feeling curled around and around again, like a cat curling up for a nap in a warm patch of sun. And she found she was actually feeling a little better.

Even so, the thought of trying to talk to him again made her nervous, after the way they'd left things. And she explained this to Karanomori in no uncertain terms. But Karanomori was one of the best listeners Akane knew apart from Kaori and well…Yuki too, when she'd been alive…and when she'd finished, Karanomori's expression showed that she'd absorbed every word.

Then she sighed and tapped more ash off of her cigarette. "I know this is probably trite, but, I think in this case, it's warranted, and perfectly true," she said. "But everything'll be okay."

Akane took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, her hands gripping the edge of the couch cushions. " _How_ though?" And before she knew it, she was getting upset again. "I took it too far, hitting him the way that I did. We _both_ took it too far, really."

"Akane, I know Gino can be cold and closed off, but he's far from heartless."

"But…well…I mean…given what I know about his relationship with Masaoka…he seems to hold onto things that hurt him. So he can protect himself but not letting himself forget how he got hurt in the first place."

"Mm. Perhaps in his father's case, the wound was just too deep. I mean, this _was_ his father, we're talking about. From what I've patched together in bits and pieces of conversations here and there, Gino only held onto something like that so tightly because of how close he and his father had been before then, when Gino had been a child. I mean…when you feel like someone that important to you hurt you, and when you're only a kid at the time…."

Karanomori's voice tailed away and a rare film of sadness clouded her eyes.

Though Akane knew Karanomori was probably right, and given that her and Ginoza were hardly what you'd call "close" so even something like what had passed between them the day before probably wouldn't drive the wedge between them that had been there betweem him and his father, she didn't feel reassured much by what Karanomori had said.

However, before she could bring this up, the door to the analysis lab hissed open, and Kunizuka poked her head inside.

"Shion?" she called.

"Come on in, Yayoi," Karanomori beckoned, finishing off her cigarette and crushing the lit end of it in the ashtray.

Then Kunizuka noticed Akane as the door slid shut behind her. "Oh. Inspector. Good morning." She found Shion in the gloom by the luminescence of the computers. "Should I—?"

"It's fine, I should be going anyway," said Akane, getting hastily to her feet and gathering up her bag and coat. "Thanks for lending an ear, Miss Karanomori," she added, giving the analyst a gracious bow.

"Anytime, Akane," Karanomori told her with gentility. "Look forward to meeting that new Enforcer, by the way." And then she caught Kunizuka's quizzical eye.

On her way out, Akane paused at the door as it hissed back open for her, and caught a glimpse of Kunizuka, now settled on the couch, leaning in towards Karanomori, and Karanomori in turn rolling her chair closer to the couch. The intimacy of it pricked something in Akane's chest, and she turned away, her face warm and her insides crumbling a little.

* * *

On lunch, Akane didn't have much of an appetite, so she was just picking at her tofu when her phone buzzed.

It was Kaori.

Akane messaged her a hello, nudging her tofu away to the side.

 _Are you free to talk when you get off work?_

 _I can talk now. For a bit. I'm on lunch. What's up?_

 _Well, I actually wanted to know how you were doing._

 _Huh?_

 _You told me one of your co-workers left. You know, the "bad boy"._

It was hard to keep this going with the pang a reference to Kogami like this caused her. However, because of this, Akane was glad that they were messaging rather than talking, because right now she would've found it difficult to speak.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, because saying that Kogami "left" was putting it so very mildly, she typed back. But it was all she could divulge as far as what had happened without breaking the confidentiality of the MWPSB.

 _Yeah. But that happens. People shift around. They get shuffled. Go in different directions._

 _Sure but you had a thing for him, didn't you?_

Akane took a deep breath, willing herself to get past this.

Anyway, the more she thought about it, it wasn't so much that she'd had a _thing_ for Kogami. She admired him, of course, and he was undeniably well…hot. He was the kind of handsome, chain-smoking rogue you read about and prayed you might be able to find in a guy who would then fall for you. In reality though, a man like that, who could be so wild and savage…and break his promises because he couldn't let go of his anger…even if his anger, that need to put a bullet in Makishima even though by that point Makishima was on the verge of bleeding out…had been for her sake, as well as Masaoka's…that kind of guy wasn't exactly good boyfriend material.

 _"This is between me and him now…."_

 _And he looked down at her again, as if he wanted to remember her, already knowing it was the last time he would see her, and yet…at the same time…he was already so far from her. And she was too badly hurt to pursue him._

Moreover, what had developed between them had felt…like something that couldn't be put into words.

Still, there was something in the way Kaori was reaching out to her now. Something that made her feel less…shitty.

She replied back.

 _Maybe. But that doesn't matter._

 _Doesn't matter?_

This was accompanied by a "worried" emoji.

 _It's fine, Kaori. Really._

 _Akane, this isn't like you. You never say things don't matter._

Akane bit her lip.

 _I just mean that there are worse things than a guy running off._

 _Why don't we meet up for dinner? Are you free later?_

 _Not tonight._

Akane hesitated and then added: _But tomorrow I am._

SEND.

 _Great! 6?_

 _Yeah. Sure._

Smiley face.

Akane sent one back, just so Kaori might stop worrying a little. Then she laid her phone aside and speared her fingers through her hair. And then it occurred to her that she was sitting at the exact same table where she and Kagari had first talked, and he'd demanded to know why she'd chosen the MWPSB when she literally could have had any job she wanted. His indignation had sprung from a life where that kind of choice—most choices, really—had been denied him from since he was a small child. And he had never even once seemed to her like anyone dangerous and disturbed. He had been nothing more than a really fun guy, who liked his games and his sugar and junk food and his booze and making his humorous cracks.

 _"Are you in love?"_

She recalled again the way he had teasingly asked her that the first time she had come to his quarters for dinner, talking about Kogami.

Was _I in love? I'm not even sure. I always felt like…bright inside whenever I was around him. And fuzzy. Now it feels like there's this great big hole inside me, and its pulling me inward, and it hurts, but…._

The alarm went off then, broadcasting an elevated stress level alert in the Shinjuku Ward, and Division One was on-call for it.

Back to work then.

As she tossed out her uneaten tofu in recycling and left the cafeteria, an imagining of Kaori's worried face kept flickering in her mind, and there it hurt too, because she wasn't sure what else she could tell her friend, if that would make herself feel any better.

In Division One's office, Kunizuka looked up from her desk and stood. "Inspector."

"Shall we head out then?" Akane asked, managing a smile.

"Right behind you." Kunizuka grabbed her coat and draped it over her arm.

As Akane did the same, she heard a chirp behind her and turned around to find Kunizuka with her arm out, index finger poised over the communicator on her other wrist. On the holo display was Akane's Psycho-Pass.

19.12. Cornflower Blue.

Akane's grin relaxed. In fact, she felt it more genuinely, seeing the concern for her in one of her Enforcers. "Making sure I'm still clear?"

Kunizuka lowered her communicator. "You just look…a little tired," she said quietly, gently.

"Well, I probably could use some sleep, but I'll be fine," Akane assured her. "Now, time we hit the pavement, yeah?"

Which actually amused Kunizuka such that the corner of her mouth curled, which for her was the equivalent of a more chipper person grinning or beaming.

Perhaps that was why Akane, even now, was managing her hue so well. Apart from the fact that, in truth, it had never felt like a cloud or a Sword of Damocles hanging over her head like it seemed to be with most people, but also because as the moments from that bloody, terrible day stretched farther and farther away into the past, Akane felt more and more determined to work harder at what she did.

Despite what he had done, breaking his promise, leaving her, leaving Ginoza, leaving them _all_ behind, she would still make Kogami proud of her, like he'd been when he'd been here. Because whatever he had done, he _had_ been proud of her, in his own way.

And with that, she and Kunizuka headed out to see what was up with Shinjuku.

* * *

"So, what do you think?" Akane asked on the other side of the glass in the visitor's room at the iso facility later that afternoon. She had a feeling that Kaguya Fukuin wasn't nearly as deductive as Daikichi Akabayashi was.

Even so, she had a playfulness that was reminiscent of Kagari.

In fact, she seemed eager, which made sense, considering that from reading her file, Akane had had the sense that again, Fukuin was one of those people with a healthy amount of guts.

The girl had had her hair dyed bright yellow, which she had tied up in a big ponytail, and she leaned back in her chair so that it was balanced just on the two back legs, one foot on the lip of the table in front of her.

"Hmmm." Kaguya Fukuin seemed to mull it over, looking up at the ceiling as though it could give her some advice. Then she looked at Akane. "Would I get to see some action?" she asked.

Akane raised her eyebrows. "More than likely," she answered dryly.

"Hmm." Fukuin chewed her lip, looking up at the ceiling again. "Ah, what to do, what to do…?" The way she sucked on her teeth, Akane wanted nothing more than to give the girl a toothpick for her to chew on. Or a cigarette.

Then, at last, Fukuin took down her foot and let the chair fall forward back onto its front legs. She gave Akane a wide grin that was all teeth. "Yeah, I'm definitely down with this. I was getting bored out of my mind in here."

Akane managed a smile herself. "Good. Happy to have you aboard. I just need to run this by the higher ups."

"That means I get one of those gun things, right?"

"A Dominator? Yes, of course. That's standard for Inspectors and Enforcers both."

"Sweet." Fukuin made her hand in the shape of a pistol and pretended to shoot it. "Can't wait."

Akane tilted her head to one side. "It's amazing. You're so upbeat for someone in iso."

Something flickered in Fukuin's eyes before she answered, "Well…I didn't get a high Crime Coefficient because I was depressed. That and when they threw me in here well, my first thought was…at least I don't have to think too much about taking care of myself."

"Hm. Sounds like you're lacking some motivation skills then."

Fukuin looked up and Akane winked at her.

"We'll have to fix _that_ , won't we?"

As she exited from the isolation facility with an amused shake of her head, the thought of Ginoza crossed Akane's mind again, and how she was going to bring this second choice of an Enforcer when things had gotten so awkward between them unexpectedly. Frowning, she supposed she'd figure out a way somehow.

She always did, after all.

* * *

When she got home later that evening, Akane sank into the chair at her writing desk. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Her wistful glance fell on the carton of Spinels on the desk, still sitting quietly on top of Kogami's folded letter.

She was just musing again on taking out one of the cigarettes when she got a call from the med ward at Nona Tower.

And they told her that they were in the process of taking Ginoza into custody.

His hue had clouded to Bottle Green, and his Crime Coefficient had spiked to 102.32, with now sounds of recovering back down to a regulation value.

Akane practically fell over jumping up from her chair. "Th-Thank you, for letting me know. Can you keep him right where he is until I get there? Don't move him to the isolation facility until I've had a chance to talk to him."

Once she got the assurance that they would keep him cuffed and stationary until she gave the order to continue with transporting him to iso, Akane cut off the call and then dashed over to her mirror, flicking open her wardrobe compact to find something to throw on. She ended up selecting from her tagged favorites, and the one she ended up going with, curiously enough, was the one she'd worn that day she and Kogami had gone to meet Professor Joji Saiga.

Though that day she _had_ dolled up a little, at least glossed her lips and lined her eyes and lashes. Even if she had insisted to Candy that it hadn't been a date.

This time she needed to get to Nona as quickly as possible, so she forwent that.

As she raced down the stairs of her building in her heels with her bag in tow, her heart pounded in her chest, fit to burst same as she herself was fit to burst into tears, even though she easily held those tears back.

 _Ginoza_ , she thought desperately. _Just hang in there. I'm coming._

She didn't know why, but even though it was too late to clear Ginoza's Psycho-Pass, or at least, there was nothing she could really do in all reality to bring that number back down before they had a chance to bring him into the iso facility (though of course she would still hold onto the hope that while in iso he would manage to do it with the aid of therapy), she still felt like she could give him some kind of light at the end of the dark tunnel stretched out before him…if she could just talk to him…and tell him how sorry she was that she'd failed him.

She had to do that…at least…for his sake. And for Masaoka's, and Kogami's too.

And her own.

* * *

They were keeping Ginoza in his room, which in this part of the medical ward, was a little homier, since this block was for physical therapy patients. Now that he was under arrest, they had a security drone parked outside in case he tried to bolt. Akane knew in her bones that he wouldn't even so much as a think it.

As it happened, Nurse Maki was on hand to lead her there as an escort. She gave Akane a wary, but at the same time, almost accusatory glance, and Akane wondered if she was remembering the day she'd come in with the box containing Masaoka's ashes.

She brushed this aside, as well as the way Maki also regarded what she was carrying in her hand.

Whatever Nurse Maki thought, Akane had no regrets where bringing Ginoza his father's ashes were concerned.

"He's in here," Maki told her quietly, opening the door for her and stepping back.

The nurse shut it behind her with a loud snap that made Akane frown before she turned to where Ginoza sat on his bed with his back to the wall, legs folded toward him with his cuffed hands between hanging limp between them. He was no longer wearing the hospital pajamas he'd been wearing the last time she saw him while he'd been working with his arm. Instead he was back in street clothes, which were, of all things, a pair of jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt that exposed his bare arms. Which quite frankly, something so rugged was rather interesting to see on someone so proper as he'd carried himself as.

This also gave Akane her first real look at his mechanical arm though. It gave her pause, seeing it there. It wasn't like it looked clunky or anything, in fact they had designed it to be quite lithe…but, as the solid reminder of the pain he'd gone through in the last few weeks, it filled Akane with the same sad sympathy she felt seeing someone limping with crutches. Physical proof of how broken he was.

He barely lifted his head, only enough so that he could see and make eye contract with Akane. And then he looked away.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in an ashamed undertone.

But then everything suddenly didn't feel quite so awkward. Or sad even.

Inspector Tsunemori was just glad that she could see her former Senior Inspector like this, just the two of them, just so they could talk, if only for a little while.

So she asked, stepping closer to the bed, "What do you _think_ I'm doing here? We're partners, right? We're supposed to have each other's backs."

To which Ginoza snorted mirthlessly, still averting his eyes, which were blanked out by the way the light hit the lenses of his glasses.

"Here." Akane handed Ginoza a bottle of Highland Dark she'd pulled from Masaoka's personal stash still locked up in a personal effects storage unit that had yet to be thoroughly gone through (Ginoza was _supposed_ to be the one to do that).

Ginoza lifted his head when he noticed the bottle of golden amber liquid, and actually managed to raise a quizzical brow at Akane as he finally met her gaze unflinchingly.

Akane simply smiled at him and reached over with her wrist communicator. She ran the scan over the cuff on his wrists, unlocking them.

"What…?"

Before he could really say anything else, Akane caught the cuffs in one hand while she pressed the whiskey bottle to him with the other. "Trade ya."

Bemused, Ginoza massaged his flesh wrist gently with his mechanical hand. Then, with a muttered word of thanks, he took the bottle from her, twisted the cap open and, after hesitating a moment, he knocked back a large swig. He coughed a couple times on its sting burning down his throat, blinked as though his eyes had even watered a bit, but then licked his lips with some satisfaction, no doubt now feeling the warmth of the alcoholic liquid settling like a merrily crackling fire in his stomach. And then, this time, he raised both eyebrows at his former Junior Inspector. "Giving a recently recorded Latent Criminal alcohol?"

"You deserve it, now more than ever." Akane went over and set the cuffs on the bedside table and dropped her bag in the nearby chair. "And it's the least I can do…after the things that I said," she added regretfully.

"Well, I said some pretty awful things myself," Ginoza said, equally regretful.

"But only because you were hurting," said Akane. "I should've considered your feelings more than I did."

Ginoza huffed and considered her again. He glanced at the beside table, where there were a couple of empty glasses next to a water pitcher. The corner of his mouth curled in that subtle way of his. "What do you know? I have two glasses." He looked back at Akane. "Join me for a drink?" he offered, raising the bottle. "If there's time, I mean. I'm guessing you've put their hauling me to iso on hold for the moment."

Akane's smile widened, and warmed to him. "Of course there's time. Thank you, Mr. Ginoza, I'd be happy to join you for a drink."


	5. Russian Violet

**Chapter Five**

 **Russian Violet**

It was more than just the alcohol that was giving Akane that warm and fuzzy feeling. It was the fact that it was Masaoka's bottle, that she and his son were sharing it like this. Like they were old friends. She wistfully imagined there had been many times in which Ginoza and Kogami had gone out drinking together. She could almost see them, Kogami poking fun at Ginoza, and Ginoza would actually take it with good humor and a few clever comebacks of his own, while the two of them knocked back their drinks. Though she supposed Kogami would've tried alcohol and Ginoza would've tried to stick with a virgin drink. But she liked to think they still had good times like that regardless.

She and Ginoza poured each other's glasses and then clinked them, Akane having joined him on the bed and both of them sitting with their backs to the wall. If you had told her the day she had first met this man that she would in due time find herself in a casual situation like this with him, she wouldn't have dared believe it possible.

Yet here they were, both of them knocking back Masaoka's golden whiskey. Akane, for her part, was trying this particular sort of alcohol for the first time, and on the first swig, she choked on the searing heat that flowed down her throat, like she'd drunk liquid fire. The burning spilled over into her nose and she lurched forward, coughing and sputtering, but despite that she did manage to keep the rest of her drink from spilling.

"You okay there?" Ginoza asked, leaning forward tentatively as if trying to decide whether or not to give her back a thump. At the same time though, his tone of voice was curiously on the edge of a laugh.

Which made Akane laugh a little herself as she sat back up and slouched next to him against the wall once more. "Sure," she gasped, catching her breath. "Just…you know…first time…drinking whiskey…."

The corner of Ginoza's mouth quirked in that typical almost-smile of his. "I figured as much," he said, and then took another swig himself.

Not missing that he didn't choke quite as much, Akane said, "Yeah…all I've had is all the wine Kagari introduced me to."

Ginoza raised his eyebrows, but his eyes themselves came over a bit misted and regretful, and Akane looked away, inferring that how much the now ex-Inspector still regretted what had happened to poor Shusei Kagari. Though Akane felt she too was to blame in some part. Just because she'd been in charge of directly handling him at the time.

She cleared her throat. "Um, anyway, so…you seem to have a little bit more experience with it. Or you're just stomaching it better on a first try."

"Maybe it's just in my blood to take it," Ginoza mused rather morosely, swilling the liquid in his own glass.

Akane, having taken a tentative second sip while Ginoza had been talking, swallowed and then opened her mouth to respond, but was forestalled by the pleasant buzz now zinging through her brain and scattering about, like a golden light exploding in her head. Definitely a faster hitter than something more mellow like wine.

"Anyway," Ginoza went on over Akane's moment of mentally short-circuiting, "I did used to go out to the bar with…well, with…Shinya and…Mitsuru…."

At this, Akane's ears pricked up and she regained her faculties of thought. "You mean…Enforcer Sasayama?"

"Yeah. When Kogami…first joined Division One from Division Three…Sasayama wanted to celebrate, so he uh…treated us to a time at this cabaret called Pink Paradise or…Pin-Para…."

Then, of all things, Ginoza's cheeks colored, and Akane, after first finding it kind of adorable, suddenly wondered if there had been pretty women involved in that jaunt as well.

Ginoza meanwhile chuckled again. "I know, right? But, even then I avoided alcohol like the plague…seeing the way my father drank…and more so after he was labeled a Latent Criminal…I didn't want to fall into any habits of his that were either seemingly causal or symptomatic of what had happened to him…so…yeah…this is the first drink I've ever had in my life." Then he looked at Akane and actually regarded her with a warm expression. "I'm glad though, somehow, that it's with you."

Then Akane felt her own face flush against her will and she sought refuge in looking back down into her own glass of whiskey. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of the shirt Ginoza had on, and her eyes glanced over the toned flat of his chest before she looked away again and took another swig from her glass. And though her eyes teared up again, she at least knew what to expect this time and managed to handle it with more grace.

Realizing though that Ginoza was regarding her with mild expectancy, clearly seeking a response from what he'd said, she licked her lips and lowered her drink, cradling it in both hands in her lap, running her thumb up and down the glass. "Well, Mr. Ginoza…I didn't think you were capable of something like flattery."

Ginoza raised his eyebrows at her again, and then he actually looked a little shocked, and with himself too, and this time he was the one who looked away in an attempt to conceal an inexplicably flustered reaction. He cleared his throat, trying to regain his more professional composure. "I'm just being honest," he told her, and took another drink.

At which Akane couldn't help smiling, and found herself relaxing, getting the same feeling she got when she spent time with her friends Kaori and, when she'd been alive, Yuki.

"This is nice," she said, after a lull of gentle quiet.

"Hm?"

Ginoza frowned at her, though out of curiosity rather than disgruntlement. There was a nuance in the difference that Akane found kind of endearing.

"What is?" he asked her.

At which Akane grinned with a teasing edge. "You…talking like a normal person."

"Oh." And then Ginoza actually a chortled, a real laugh threatening to come out.

"Does it feel okay?" Akane ventured to ask.

"Heh. Let me think." Ginoza took another mouthful of whiskey and then admired the way the light filtered through the liquid's golden color. "It does. Thanks. I need this…considering where I'm going."

Akane's smile retreated somewhat. "Do you think…you might still come back?"

"Come back? You mean…as an Enforcer?"

"Yes."

Ginoza's expression turned sober and he quaffed the rest of his drink. As he did, Akane leaned over and grabbed the bottle sitting on the nightstand. When she held it out, he offered her his empty glass for her to pour more whiskey into it.

"I don't know," he finally said as she set the bottle back down. "I'm not sure I want to really think about that right now."

"All right then. We can talk about something else then." Akane stretched a little and sipped a bit more of her own whiskey. She was still on her first glass, but it was coming down on her like a rain of happy sparkles.

"Like what?" Ginoza asked, actually sounding kind of mischievous.

Which quickly sparked Akane's interest, no less her desire to dig into him slightly for it. "Who was your first crush?" she asked him, boldly lifting her chin and raising an eyebrow, daring him to brush off the question.

Ginoza stared at her as his cheeks colored again and he took refuge in his glass once more. "Come on, that's not fair."

"How is that not fair?"

"Don't I get to ask you something like that first?"

"Fine then. I'll tell you my first crush first. First." Akane giggled a bit and then continued, rolling back her eyes as she thought a moment. "Let's see…my first crush…. That would be…this guy I met back in high school. All the girls loved him, really. He was a _huge_ flirt. But the kind that made you want to make him see you as the one girl he cared about most, that you could have wrapped around your finger."

"But this crush went unrequited, I assume?"

"Naturally. One in part because I did my best to keep to my studies even though I wanted to put more effort into getting the guy to notice me, and two, because even though he was gorgeous as hell, he was as dumb as a rock."

Ginoza sniggered. "Glad to know you had your priorities straight."

"Of course I did." Akane grinned. "Now, it's your turn." She resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs like they were old pals. It felt right, but something in her told her that Ginoza would feel his personal space invaded by the gesture. Sure they were drinking together, casual as they come, but this was only a first step, and Akane knew that even then, Ginoza was only willing to go along this far because of a combination of alcohol and his own vulnerable and low spirits—the kind that was willing to put up with anything for a dose of much-needed companionship.

"All right, all right," Ginoza conceded, and he cleared his throat. "Well…the first person I had a crush on was well…yeah, in high school…and it was this really pretty, smart, and funny girl whose mind danced with numbers and equations so effortlessly. She was a genius at stuff like science, especially chemistry. But she was also kind to pretty much everyone. I think she's a doctor now, actually. However…."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, my feelings were unrequited too. She uh…had an unrequited crush on…Kogami."

"Oh."

Another silence fell between them, both of them considering the bottoms of their glasses again.

Then Akane said, "So you two went to school together?"

"We did. He had my back when I got…harassed by some of the other guys. So I…made sure that I would always have his in return…."

Ginoza's eyes dimmed wistfully, and Akane felt compelled again to steer the conversation away from such delicate topics.

But then Ginoza said, his voice croaking with as yet unexpressed grief, "I always thought that…for a while I thought, anyway…that my father…loved and respected Ko more than he did me. Especially after Shinya's hue clouded and he joined my father on the other side of the law." He drained his glass here too, all but chugging the whiskey down, and Akane was quick to pour him a third dose of the stuff.

It was the only thing she really _could_ do for him at this point.

Ginoza took another swig and then went on, "It made things really lousy…so I tried my best to just…keep myself closed off from most people…. It just…got to a point where it hurt too much to keep trying when I kept getting disappointed." He shook his head and this time he snorted with a laugh that was mirthless. "It's funny. Well…not really but…I mean…I put so much energy into berating you about unnecessarily clouding your hue…and here _I_ am…the one with a Latent Criminal's Crime Coefficient."

He ventured to meet her eyes here, and Akane knit her brows compassionately. But again, she was at a loss for anything to say, which again, made him look away.

"Don't misunderstand. It's not like I'm looking for pity." He knocked back more whiskey.

Akane watched him, and found herself giving him her kind and sincere yet sad smile, for now, in that moment, she knew exactly what to say to him. "I never thought you were one to ever ask for something like that," she told him.

Which made Ginoza lifted his head and stare at her, a little in awe perhaps.

But Akane met his shocked and almost supplicating expression unflinchingly, finishing off her drink and then lifting her empty glass, which snapped Ginoza out of his temporary trance and got him to reach over for the bottle and pour her a second glass.

"Very well then, since we're dissecting my screwed up psyche, might as well go all the way," Ginoza muttered as he replaced the bottle on the nightstand. "So, this actually all kind of brings back a bad memory," he said, though by his tone he didn't sound entirely unwilling to talk about it either.

Akane said nothing as she waited for him to speak, taking another sip from her second glass of whiskey.

"It's of the day I got the call that Kogami'd…crossed that line." Ginoza heaved a sigh and ironed his forehead with his palm a minute before he went on. "He'd been flagged by a street scanner while he'd been out there, trying to follow that lead on Makishima that was all Sasayama had had to leave behind as a legacy, and well…Division Three brought him in. Initially, anyway. Me, Dad, and Kunizuka were on-duty and called in as backup so we…had to help. And… well…I was the one who got the shot in that brought Ko down…when he tried to resist.

"Which was sad in its own way, seeing as how Division Three was where he'd started out. Him and Dad. That's where he'd been green as an Inspector, and Dad…he'd taught him a lot of the things that you picked up from both of them."

Akane glanced at the time. She got despondent to see how late it was, moreover at the silent message she'd just gotten from the mental health aide asking if she was planning on handing Ginoza into CID custody any time soon. In spite of herself, she pushed this aside and took another drink from her glass. But then she noticed Ginoza watching her and got a chill.

He gave her a bitter smile. "It's getting late, isn't it?" he asked her, shrewdly intuiting that Akane was trying to act like time wasn't on their side and that they could just stay here drinking, just the two of them, until dawn.

Akane sighed. "Yeah. It is. But…you get to be the one to say when."

"Oh I do, do I?" Ginoza almost sounded coy.

"Yep." Akane finished off the rest of her drink, enduring the fire that slid down her throat, stomaching it much better this time, feeling more and more dreamily relaxed. "But I will say that I think it's a shame that you're not properly drunk yet."

"Well, only one way to fix that," said Ginoza rather cavalierly, and he poured her a third round and they clinked glasses and drank at the same time.

"Oh shoot, we forgot to toast to something," said Akane.

"Oh. Right. Ah…." Ginoza noticed that now his glass was empty, so Akane poured him more whiskey as he thought. "I know," he said when Akane set the bottle back down, "to my dad!"

"All right then, to Mr. Masaoka!" Akane practically cheered, the two of them clinking glasses and drinking again.

"And to Shinya Kogami, God love the...bastard!" Ginoza added, this time a little more slurrily than before.

And though Akane could feel even sitting down how tipsy she was getting, she was more than willing to ride the wave as she clinked glasses with Ginoza a third time and they both drank to Kogami and his recklessness.

Ginoza finished off his glass again with an air of abandon that Akane hadn't thought he was capable of until now. But then he seemed to remember himself when he looked at her and their eyes met. And then his eyes filled.

Realizing this, Ginoza, though he was still smiling, muttered, "Damn it," and took off his glasses, pressing the back of his hand to his eyes. Despite his efforts though, like before, he couldn't hold back, much as he tried, and the poor guy let out a hiccup that turned into another sob that preceded a torrent of tears.

Drink had its benefits, but also its dangers, just like Kagari had once told Akane, rather wisely for someone like him. In this case though, Akane couldn't be sure. The whiskey had loosened someone as wound tight as Ginoza so much that it had him crying for the second time in front of her, and giving little effort at restraining himself.

Yeah, he was definitely drunk and not acting with his usual caution.

At the same time though, it had loosened someone like Akane enough to breach her own apprehension and unbridle her natural compassion, reaching out to him with both hands and wrapping her arms around his shaking shoulders. And because he was loosened, he was unresisting to her as she pulled him against her, and so he let himself cry into her shoulder like a child. And also because she too was loosened, she felt no inhibition in letting her heart break for him, bit by bit, like glass cracking under an immense weight, with every choked sob, her own eyes filled and she hugged him closer.

"I'm so sorry, Akane," Ginoza choked out. "I'm no good to you…not like this…."

"Don't be ridiculous," Akane told him, soft but firm. "This isn't the end for you. You and I both know that."

"But it's so hard…when all I can see ahead is darkness…."

"Just breathe. And you'll find the way up. But take your time. Take all the time you need…."

They stayed like that, for perhaps an age. Akane managed to lose track of the time again. Maybe it was really only a moment.

But it was a moment that Akane would never forget nonetheless.

And she felt something warm in her chest, the kind that flooded her with hope like she hadn't felt in the last few days.

Then Ginoza gave a gasp and, like a cat, started to pull away. Realizing that the man must've somewhat come back to his usual senses, Akane relinquished her hold on him, regarding him with nothing but kind patience as he struggled to compose himself. She understood his mindset completely when he inched away from her—not because of her, but because of his own discomfiture, his self-deprecation over acting so unprofessionally with her, at allowing himself that luxury.

"I'm sorry…" he rasped, wiping as his eyes with the heels of his hands. "That was inappropriate of me, I…I mean we…."

"Mr. Ginoza…it's fine," Akane told him mollifyingly, and he looked at her, as if he couldn't believe what she was saying. Her smile widened. "It's not like you have many options," she said, and by "options" she meant "shoulders to cry on" and he seemed to understand that as he simply nodded.

She thanked him for the drink, said she enjoyed having the time just to be able to talk to him like this, and this seemed to relax him again a little. He even managed another of his crooked half-smiles back at her and said, "Of course. Same…here."

At the door he stopped her one last time, and asked if she'd be so kind as to make sure his father got a good burial.

Akane smiled sweetly at him from the door, her bag over her shoulder. "Of course. I'll overlook the whole thing in your place."

Ginoza's eyes rounded out and then he shook his head. "No, I can't ask you to go through all of that, it's too much just for a co-worker."

"Well, who else will?" Akane pointed out.

Try as he might, Ginoza couldn't seem to think of a good answer, and his shoulders slumped again in defeat. Swiping the bottle of whiskey and unscrewing the cap, he conceded with, "All right. I mean…he was always rather fond of you. Like the daughter he never had, I suppose."

A fist—one of more warmth, but a fist nonetheless—lodged itself in Akane's chest, and for a moment it was hard to breathe. But she managed to compose herself and put her smile back on. "Don't you worry about a thing. I'll take care of it. I'm happy to. But don't you go overboard on the drinking," she added as Ginoza took a swig of what was left of the whiskey straight from the bottle.

Ginoza glanced over at her as he did so, before he took one more gulp and then wiped his mouth off uncharacteristically with the back of his hand. "Yeah. Sure." And just to reassure her on that score, he screwed the cap back on and then leaned over and tucked the rest of the whiskey in a drawer. Sure it wasn't a locked drawer, but Akane felt the gesture alone said enough.

Hopeful again for his sake, she bade him farewell, and then, after a moment, added, "And listen…whatever you decide, Ginoza…there'll always be a place for you at MWPSB."

* * *

This was not a good look.

Of course, she could use holo makeup to make them disappear, but she would still know that dark crescents underlined her very tired eyes that morning. Given this, she just let the whole thing slide and did bother with covering them up.

Running on three hours of sleep and having to get back up again for work was not cool, but it still wouldn't do anyone any favors to take a personal day (save for the day she had planned for the internment of Masaoka's ashes). Sure, they were getting a couple of new recruits, but they were still new, and needed training and proper introduction into the group. Moreover, Akane was still flying solo as the Inspector and there was no way she'd be able to leave her "hounds" without their leashes, as it were.

Needless to say, she could feel herself running purely on grit and drive. She dealt with this by piling task after task upon herself so she could tear through each of them like a machine working on backup power. She gave herself hardly a moment at all to think, that way she didn't have to think about how tired she was.

That is until Aoyanagi offered her this, stopping her just outside of Division One's office door on her way to find something in Archives.

"Hey, listen, seriously, I'll take Kunizuka off your hands for a bit until you get things a bit more stabilized. And you've had a chance to take a couple of personal days. You're gonna crack if you don't chillax."

Akane raised an eyebrow at her senior. "'Chillax'?"

Aoyanagi rolled her eyebrows. "You know. Chill. Relax. Chillax."

"I know what it means, Inspector, I just wasn't expecting someone like you to use the term." Akane did manage a tired smile though. "Anyway, I couldn't possibly do that now, not with two Latent Criminals coming in to join up with Division One as Enforcers. I need to oversee that. And then there's Mr. Masaoka's internment."

"Right. You're right." Aoyanagi sighed and then sobered. "So…Ginoza. He crossed over."

"Mm." Akane clasped her hands behind her back, avoiding her fellow Inspector's eyes. She was getting the sense that in the event of an Inspector becoming a Latent Criminal, it created an overall grim atmosphere in the office. She had little doubt that something similar had descended upon the place when someone like Kogami had "crossed over".

Then she felt a pair of eyes sear through her back, the nape of her neck prickling, and out of the periphery of her vision she caught Inspector Suzuki of Division Three passing them by in the hall.

But then Aoyanagi cleared her throat pointedly, and, arms folded underneath her breasts, cut Suzuki a glare that made him stiffen and quicken his pace, the heels of his shoes clicking on the linoleum. Then she caught Akane's eye again and actually smiled, if soberly.

"Don't go blaming yourself," she told her.

"How did you—?"

"Because I'd be doing the same thing in your place."

"Oh." Akane supposed she shouldn't have been surprised. She even wondered if Aoyanagi was still blaming herself regardless, considering how she was one of Ginoza's very few close colleagues. His only one, really.

At least he had that going for him.

"He's lucky he's got someone like you looking out for him," Aoyanagi went on, and she actually winked.

Akane blinked, taken aback. Apart from being confused about being referred to as someone who "looked after" Ginoza, she was about to ask, "What about you?" but thought better of it and bit the question back.

Aoyanagi though seemed to pick up on it anyway. "I know what you're thinking, but I'm not exactly the comforting type."

"Mm." Again, Akane wasn't exactly sure how to say that she quite agreed. Aoyanagi was many things, and kind in her own way, but she was definitely too blunt to be someone who could comfort others. At best she could probably offer good companionship over a drink (if a non-alcoholic one, given that she was an Inspector, which Akane rather thought was something of a shame because in her opinion Aoyanagi seemed like the sort who would be a lot of fun to drink with and could really hold her liquor).

But then Aoyanagi chuckled and actually grasped Akane on the shoulder, giving it a squeeze in a gesture of camaraderie. "It's fine. We all have each other's backs here, you should know that by now. At least, _I_ think we should." She glanced down the hallway in the direction they'd just seen Suzuki disappear.

Akane followed her glance. "Yeah. I think so too. After all, that sort of thing is something we've got over Sibyl."

Aoyanagi raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean by that?"

Realizing she was on the edge of letting the truth slip, Akane backpedaled as best as she could, laughing lightly and waving a hand. "Oh you know. I mean…it's a computer program, right? It just…goes through the motions. I mean…we _think_ of it as thinking but…it's still a computer…right?"

"Right…." Aoyanagi studied her a moment longer, and then her wristlet chirped. "It's Shisui. I'd better go." She gave Akane one last grin as she turned leave. "Hang in there, okay?"

"Yeah…sure." Akane raised an uncertain hand in a sort of wave, suddenly wondering if this meant she was gaining more of a foothold in the CID, establishing a rapport like this with another Senior Inspector.

Supposing that, she took comfort in it. After all, given everything, she expected she was going to get pushed into a Senior Inspector position of her own more quickly than normal. At the same time though, she couldn't help a shiver up her spine as she ran her hand up her arm.

It was like Sibyl was right there, right beside her, a specter, always watching her, always listening.

Then again, that's what it was like all the time.

Funny how easily she could forget that when she really wanted to.

* * *

When Akane went to feed Dime later, she was surprised to find a very small shelf of paper-and-glue bound books in a corner of the otherwise spare sitting room. Curious, she knelt down and ran her fingers along the spines, surmising that they were mostly rare first editions that someone like Ginoza—who was into things like collecting old coinage—would favor having in their possession just to have them. Of course, he had an e-reader tablet like most, but she found something charming in imagining him every so often getting a fancy to come here and pick out a physical book and dreamily drift through it with lazy yet methodical turns of the pages.

Her finger landed on one about the Third American Civil War, and another about how Russia had collapsed under its own weight and rebroke, reverting to something akin to the former Soviet Union, and then another on the formation of the Southeast Asia Union. Places that had become among the most violent and cruel places in the world. Japan prided itself on being able to protect itself from such a fate by reestablishing isolationist policies and curling itself up inside the Sibyl System. Like an echidna.

Even though Ginoza kept his reading tastes to non-fiction, she did find one book that was clearly a novel. Was it Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_ , or Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_? Or even something quirky like a collection of Sir Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes? She just had this sense that if he did pick up any fiction, it was going to be the classics. Or historical fiction. Which were things that weren't strictly contraband—none of this was—but it was highly advised against for those who got high stress levels just from reading about bloody histories and stories full of death and danger.

Which was a shame because a lot of the best stories involved those, oddly enough. And in Ginoza's case, Akane highly doubted that books like this caused him any undue stress.

No, the novel she found was something called _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She flicked through a few pages. From the bits and pieces that she snatched up with her eyes, it was a strange book. Fascinating, but a curious thing for someone like Ginoza to take an interest in. Then again, perhaps he'd just gotten it because it was another rare book he'd managed to find.

She smiled at the thought of asking him next time she saw him before replacing the book quietly back on the shelf.

* * *

The following day, she operated much the same as she did the day before, especially with Akabayashi and Fukuin incoming from the isolation facility at noon. She wasn't handling the basic training, but she was there to welcome them when they arrived in the armored transport and stepped off, each carrying a duffle full of all their possessions, taken with them from iso.

"Yo, Inspector." Fukuin gave an energetic little wave.

Akabayashi glanced sidelong at her, like he was wary of her acting so familiar with the woman who would be both her superior, as well as her handler out in the field. Then he seemed to dismiss it and simply greeted Akane with a respectful nod.

Akane returned the nod in kind, but also responded to Fukuin with a rather chummy, "Good to see you so enthusiastic, Miss Fukuin."

Fukuin mimed punching out a couple of invisible perps. "Yeah, I'm kinda itchin' to get out there and take down some bad guys, know what I mean?"

"Found your motivation, have you?"

"Sure. Why not? Makes me feel better about myself, anyway. I'll be making a difference, right?"

Akabayashi frowned, but still made no comment. It seemed that now he didn't know quite what to make of his fellow recruit and shifted the strap of his duffle slung over his shoulder.

Akane couldn't help her amusement as she turned on her heel. "Absolutely. But, before we do that, we should get you two settled in. If you'll follow me, I'll take you up to your assigned quarters."

"Ooooooh, nice! Can't wait to see my new digs. And I can spruce it up however I like right?"

"Indeed you can. Within reason of course. But it'll definitely be much less restrictive than iso."

"Sweet!" Fukuin was beyond effervescent. For all she'd said about not caring too much about getting locked up since it removed some of the burdens of self-responsibility, it seemed she'd been itching for a little more wiggle room as far as daily living conditions went.

Akane didn't wonder at it, since she was much like Kagari in particular. The lifers in iso, like that artist that she and Kogami had visited for questioning, seemed to get to make their quarters a little homier, depending upon several other variables based on an individual's circumstances, but the ones who were supposedly only meant to be there short-term (in the end, not exactly true) were pretty sparse, and much smaller.

Predictably then, Fukuin did little to suppress her excitement when she was shown her quarters. She all but squealed, bouncing on the balls of her booted feet as she spun around the living space, stripped bare as it was. Then she looked at Akane and actually bowed.

"Thank you so much, Inspector! This is more incredible than I could've hoped for!"

"Hey, no need to thank me," Akane chuckled, her arms folded under her breasts. "I don't make the decisions about who gets what room."

That said though, she couldn't help a measure of warmth when her thoughts touched once more on the fact that this space had in fact been Kagari's former quarters. She glanced about the now empty dwelling, visualizing from memory where the pinball machine had been, the sofa where she'd drunk glass upon glass of wine, the little kitchenette where Kagari had cooked for them. Pieces of lovely memories of time spent simply hanging out with someone she considered a coworker, not an underling (even though that had technically been the case).

She remembered when she'd first showed up here, offering Kagari her company, and a peace offering, being that at the time when they'd previously spoken, he'd blown up in her face about how she had been lamenting about her burdens of choice when most people (especially people like him) got hardly any, if at all. He'd blinked in surprise, and then he'd laughed, diffusing any sort of tension that Akane had felt had cropped up between them.

Now, as she observed Fukuin toss her duffle aside and bound over to the large window to peer out of it, she felt certain that Kagari would be quite satisfied with someone like her inheriting his place here.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," Akane told her as she stepped out, pausing only to add, "And if you'll look here, there's a call pad by the door if you need anything, because now I've gotta lock you in."

Fukuin spun around, her ponytail whipping around after her. Just for a moment she looked crestfallen as she said, "Oh right." But then she glanced at the call pad. "But if I need anything, I just use that, right?"

"Yep. Which'll come in handy when you wanna make big purchase orders for things like sofas…tables…pinball machines. Which reminds me, until you get that sorted, they'll be sending you each a futon so you're not without something to sleep on tonight." Akane grinned. "You'll need all the sleep you can get after all, since you start training bright and early tomorrow morning."

Fukuin lit up again, and Akane bid her farewell with a wink before shutting and locking the door with her ID and authority as an Inspector. Then she sighed and glanced over at Akabayashi waiting for her in the hall.

"I know," she said. "It's still a prison, more or less."

Akabayashi shrugged. "Yes, a gilded prison, but if I at least get to live mostly how I choose in my own personal space, I'll be happy enough."

"You're pretty take-it-or-leave-it, aren't you?" said Akane as she started further along the row of Enforcer quarters and Akabayashi followed in step with her.

"I'm a resigned soul, to put it simply," said Akabayashi. "But at least here, I won't feel too much like I'm simply wasting away. And there's the occasional adrenaline spike I'll more than likely get from working out in the field. You know, to keep things interesting."

Akane covered her mouth to suppress a full-on laugh. She couldn't help it. She found his blaisé attitude rather endearing, if she were being honest.

Akabayashi raised an eyebrow at her. "Inspector?"

"I'm sorry," she said, regaining her composure as they reached the door to Akabayashi's assigned quarters, "I just like how straightforward you are."

"Oh." Akabayashi blinked, bemused as Akane opened the door for him and stepped aside to let him pass.

"Well, take your time settling in, and again, gotta lock you in, but there's the call pad by the door if you need anything," said Akane, giving Akabayashi a softer, and rather more serious smile. "'Kay, is that everything? Yeah, that's everything. For now, anyway."

A corner of Akabayashi's mouth tugged upward, and he almost returned her smile. "You're a little…off, aren't you, Inspector? I mean, permission to make a personal observation."

"Well, since you already did, yes, permission granted," Akane teased, and Akabayashi actually laughed a little.

After she'd left him to get acquainted with his new home (sparse as it was), Akane rewarded herself with another smile, one of personal triumph.

Oh yes, she felt she'd made some pretty good choices as far as a couple of new recruits were concerned.

She was only wistful at the fact that Ginoza wasn't here to see how well she was managing on her own.

* * *

Not that she really _had_ to do it, she just felt she _needed_ to do it.

After she got off her shift later that day, and before meeting up with the officiant who was helping her put together Mr. Masoaka's internment, since she had a little time, she made a detour and stopped off by the isolation facility. Seeing as how she'd gotten Fukuin and Akabayashi settled in at Nona Tower, she was concerned about how Ginoza was getting on after being transferred to iso.

Even more surprising though was the sense of a brick of lead being dropped into her stomach when one of the iso attendants came back to her, telling her that Mr. Ginoza didn't want to see her.


End file.
